i«^^?M« 



■ 






UBW IU JMIlll I XKL J_jIjLL, 






S 




HHH 



m 













vl 









.w^ 






t4x&\ 



/~\ 



THE 



BOOK OF ELOQUENCE 



COLLECTION O.F EXTRACTS 
IN 

PROSE AND VERSE, 

FROM THE MOST FAMOUS OliATORS AND POETS; 

INTENDED AS EXERCISES FOR DECLAMATION IN COLLEGES 
AND SCHOOLS. 

V 
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 



M Suit the action to the word, the word to the action ; svith this special 
observance, that yon o'erstep not the modesty of nature." — Sha^-Speake. 

u Quid faeundia posset 

Re patuit ." — Uviu, Met. Lib. xiii. 



BOSTON: 
LEE AND SIIEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

SEW YORK: CHARLES T- DILLINGHAM. 

1886. 



,\ 



iX 



0* 



<fV 



TO 

SIMON C. HITCHCOCK, ESQ., 

THIS WORK 

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED Bl 

THE EDITOR, 

AS SOME LITTLE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF KINDNESS SHOWN 
THROUGH MANY YEARS. 



PREFACE. 

The continual call in our schools for extracts suitable for 
declamation, and the difficulty of obtaining them, has induced 
the editor to prepare the present work, which he hopes will 
meet the demand. Of the many compilations of a similai de- 
sign in print, some are utterly unfit for their intended purpose, 
by reason of the too great length of the selections, and npany 
all having been long in use, have become irksome to the stu- 
dent ; and it has been an especial endeavor in this work to pie- 
sent new and spirited extracts, and not to encumber it with 
those too lengthy for practical use. AVith the object in view 
of compiling a really valuable book for declamation, the usual 
mode has been slightly departed from ; the prose being made 
to outbalance the poetry, and dialogues being entirely omitted, 
as the writings of the best dramatists, — and those alone can be 
used with profit, — are in every one's hands, and the introduc- 
tion of the usual hackneyed colloquies of school-books would 
only serve to crowd out more useful matter. 

Yet, in making this a new book, the editor has not permitted 
himself to lose sight of those master-pieces of eloquence, which, 
though familiar, never grow old, neither lose their interest by 
lapse of years, nor grow stale by repetition, and which should 
always find a place in a book of this character, until the great 
names of American and of European story fall unheeded on the 
ear, until the mention of Marathon and Bannockburn and Bun- 
ker Hill fails to quicken the pulse and brighten the eye. 

It has not been thought best to insert rules for declamation, 
as comprehensive and approved works on elocution are accessi- 



PREFACE 



We to every one, and the compiler of this volume would only 
urge the absolute necessity of a constant and persevering course 
of drilling and practice in declamation, if the student would at- 
tain any excellence in the great art of oratory. An often cited 
maxim from Horace might not untruly read, 

" Poeta nascitur, orator fit " 

since it is only by untiring study that pre-eminence in elocution 
can be attained ; and, to substantiate this, we have the example 
of the Athenian orators, of Lord Chatham practising before 
his glass the gestures and the very expression which so en- 
tranced the House of Lords, and the known fact that the most 
eloquent men of our own time are diligent students and imi- 
tators of the best models. And it is grateful to observe that 
the art of oratory is every day obtaining more attention, and 
gradually regaining the rank and consideration it held in the 
early republics. 

The editor takes this opportunity to thank his personal friends 
for their assistance in this undertaking:, and to acknowledge the 
courtesy of those gentlemen in various parts of the Union, to 
whom he has had occasion to apply, and whose liberal and 
efficient aid will always be remembered with pleasure and with 
pride. 

C. D. W. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 
SELECTIONS OF PEOSE. 



AMERICAN ELOQUENCE. 

PAGS 

1. Ancient and Modern Eloquence Adams. 13 

2. Duty of America Webster. 1-1 

3. The Ultima Thule Everett. 15 

4. Our Relation to Europe Clay. 16 

5. The Name of Republic .Leg are. 1 7 

6. Eulogy on Andrew Jackson Bancroft. 18 

7. Injustice toward Kossuth Webster. 19 

8. Importance of Lirerary Pursuits Everett. 20 

9. Freedom and Patriotism Dewet. 22 

10. Teachings of the American Revolution Sparks. 23 

11. The Present Age Chaxning. 25 

12. State Veto Power Calhoun. 26 

13. State Veto Power Webster. 27 

14. Vindication of the South Clemens. 28 

15. Ties .that bind the West to us Everett. 29 

16. Patriotic Appeal McDowell. 31 

17. California and Plymouth Rock. Benton. 32 

18. The Honor of War Chanxtng. 32 

19. Danger of Indian Hostilities Ames. 34 

20. Nominal War Randolph. 35 

21. The Difficult Step Randolph. 36 

22. Death of John Q. Adams Seward. 37 

23. Death of Xapoleon Seward. 39 

24. Who is Blannerhassett ? W t irt. 40 

25. Doom of the Indians Story. 42 

26. Virginia Bedinger. 44 

27. Massachusetts Palfrey. 45 

28. The Constitution Webster. 47 

29. The Peace Congress Anonymous. 48 

80. Literature Perverted Anonymous. 49 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

31. Civilization of Africa Everett. 50 

32. Public Di>honesiy Bencher. 51 

33. World-wide Fame of Washington . . Robbins. 52 

34. On the Withdrawal of the Army from Mexico Hannkgan. 53 

35. Retributive Justice . Oouwin. 54 

36. No National Greatness without Molality, ChannjnO. 57 

37. True Grandeur of Nat inns'; Sumner. 59 

38. Vicissitudes of 1849 Gkekley. 60 

39. Acquisition of Territory. Dickinson. 60 

40. Acquisition of Territory Miller. 62 

41. The First American Congress Maxky. 63 

42. Liberty and De-potisni Clinton. 64 

43. Resistance to Oppression . .Maxky. ()ij 

44. Democracy Dim. Revi kw. 67 

45. Obligation of Treaties A - -ks. 69 

46. The Preservation of the Union. Wkb^ter. 70 

47. No Extinction of Freedom by Force Johnson. 71 

48. Disunion and War in-ep nable Clay. 72 

4 9. The Expunging Resolution Clay. 73 

50. Oenmre of Au-iria , Cass. 75 

51. Improvement of the West Harrison. 76 

52. Plea for the Descendants of James Kmmey Rumsey. 77 

53. The Sabbath. . . .Frklinghuysen. 78 

54. Invidious Distinctions Legale. 80 

55. Eulogy on Yell Bedinger. 81 

56. Genoa in her Beamy Sumner.. 82 

57. Best Policy in Regard to Naturalization Levin. 83 

58. An Appeal for Oregon McDowell. 84 

59. Always Ready but never Rash Bkuinger. 85 

60. Secession Webster. 86 

61. Peaceful Conquests Dix. 88 

62. A Striking Picture Evkrktt. 89 

63. Power of Wealth produced by Labor Burgkss. 90 

64. Modern Idol Worship Spraglte. 91 

65. Just ire to Frontiei men Peyton. 92 

66. Northern Laborers Naylor. 94 

67. Di-cussion of Webster and Hayne Johnson. 95 

68. On the Platform of the Constitution Wkbster. 97 

69. Impressment of American Seamen Clay. 98 

70. The Issue Anonymous, 99 

7 1 . The Marriage brok< n off . Benton, loo 

72. America's Influence Abroad McDowell. 101 

73. The Extent of the Union Houston. 102 

74. Clay and Webster Gentry. 103 

75. Glory of Arms Sumner. 105 

76. On the Removal of Washington's Remain* Clayton. 106 

77. On the Revolutionary Pension Bill Davis. 107 

78. The Mayflower Everktt. 108 

79. Philanthropy Way land. 1 10 

80. Indemnity to the Niagara Sufferers Williams. 1 II 

81 Indemnity to the Niagara Sufferers V axuk. 112 

82. Suppression of Piracy Barbour. 1 13 



CONTENTS. V 

page 

83. Communication with Mexico in 1825 Benton. 114 

84. Liberty in South America Randolph. 1 16 

85. Last Charge of Xey Headlky. 117 

80. Defense of Poets '.Lyon. 1 18 

ST. The Militia General and his Forces Con win. 119 

88. Who is Independent \ Hhett. 121 

81*. Condition of Insolvent Debtors Clay. 123 

90. Remembrance of Wrongs ChOa«e. 123 

91. Military Character of General Taylor . .Hilliabd. 124 

92. Kulogium on South Carolina Hayne. 12(5 

i)H. South Carolina and Massachusetts Webster. 1 28 

94. Reply to Mr. Webster Hayne. 129 

95. Rejoinder to Mr. Hayne Webstkr. 181 

96. Final Triumph of Democracy Dem. Review. 133 

97 Amendment to the Constitution Isaacs. 135 

98. Mis-ion to Panama \V ebster. 1 86 

99. Our Duty to Revolutionary Soldiers.. Spkaguk. 188 

100. T/ie Zero Line of Valor Barton. 189 

101. Effect of Steadiness of Pursuit Robbixs. 140 

102. The .Territories YVinthrop. 141 

103. Triumph of Poetry over Arms Story. 14 3 

lt>4. Danger of Faction Gaston, 14 3 

]<>5. Evil of Duelling Bkkckkr. 144 

106. Puritan and Spartan Heioi.-m Choate. 145 

107. Appeal in Behalf of Greece Clay. 147 

108. Achievements <»f the Pilgrims Everett." 149 

109. Duty of Lit rary Men to America Gri.mke. 150 

1 10. Death of Hamilton Norr. 152 

111. Invective of Hungary Buell. 1 53 

112. The Admission of California Seward. 154 

1 13. Undivided Allegiance Seward. 1 55 

1 14. Means of Health, Mann. 157 

1 15. Brief Authority Bayard. 158 

1 1 6. The Ground of Ti eaty Morris. 1 59 

1 17. Fourth of July, 1 85 1" Wkbstkr. 1*31 

1 18. Aspirations of the American People Hunter. 1 62 

] 19. Eloquence Stanton. 164 

120 Death of Washington Mason. 165 

121. Address to South Carolina Jackson. 166 

1 22. American History Verplanck. 1 67 

1 23 Contest of a People for Freedom Everett. 168 

1 24 Welcome to Lafayette Everett 169 

1 25. Right of Spanish America to Revolt Clay. 1 69 

126 On the Recognition of La Plata Clay. 171 

127. On the Judiciary Morris. 172 

1 28. Necessity of Resistance Henry. 173 

129. The War with Mexico Badoer. 174 

180. The Embargo Quincey. 176 

181. Sorrow for the Dead Irving. 177 

1 32. Price of Liberty Gills. 179 

188 How to gain an Honest Name .Barnes. ISO 

1 34. The Poet Emerson. 181 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGC 

135. Injustice the Cause of National Ruin Parker. 182 

136. Supposed Speech against the Declaration Webster. 184 

137. Supposed Speech of Adams in Reply Webster. 185 

138. Society without Morality Beecher. 186 

139. Embassy to Rome Levin. 187 

140. Cessation of Hostilities Dayton. 189 

141. The Puritans Whipple. 190 

142. The Demagogue k Beecher. 191 

143. Eulogium. on John Q. Adams Holmes. 192 

144. The Levelling System Beecher. 194 

145. Spirit of Liberty in 1772 Warren. 195 

146. On the Boston Massacre Warren. 196 

147. Men who never Die Everett. 197 

148. Literary Position of America Story. 198 

149. When War shall be no more Anonymous. 199 

150. A Picture of Terror Upham. 200 

151. Stopping the March of Freedom Parker. 201 

152. Invective in the " Wilkinson Trial" Prentiss 202 

153. The World of Beauty around us Mann. 203 

154. Danger of Vast Fortune Mann. 204 

155. Influence of Republican Geneva on the Puritans. . . .Choate. 205 

1 56. The same — continued Choate, 206 

157. Secret of the Murderer Webster. 2o7 

158. Bunker Hill Monument Webster. 208 

1 59. Moral Power of Public Opinion Webster. 209 

160. Sacred from War Sumner. 211 

161. Plea in the Michigan Railroad Conspiracy Trial. . . .Seward. 212 

162. Danger of Military Supremacy Clay. 213 

163. Executive Clemency Beecher. 214 

164. Death of Jefferson and Adams Everett. 215 

165. Executive Power Webster. 216 

166. Greatness of Napoleon Chanxing. 217 



EUROPEAN ELOQUENCE, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 

1. The Perfect Orator Sheridan. 221 

2. Appeal for Queen Caroline Brougham. 222 

3. Demand for Justice to Ireland O'Connell. 223 

4. Defence from the Charge of Tyranny Robespierre. 223 

5. Peroration in the Oration against Warren Hastings.. . .Burke. 225 

6. Catiline's Address to the Conspirators Sallust. 226 

7. Conciliation of Ireland Erskine. 227 

8. A Free Constitution Bolingbroke. 229 

9. Immortal Influence of Athens Macaulay. 230 

10. Trial of Warren Hastings Macaulay. 231 

1 1. Burns Carlyle. 232 

12. Personal Vindication Mirabkau. 233 

13. The Duke of Wellington Alison. 234 

14. France and the Republic Berryer. 236 

16. On the Presidential Election Lamartjne. 237 



CONTENTS. Vll 

PAGE 

16. The Mysteries of Life Chateaubriand. 238 

17. In Relation to the Impeachment of Hastings Sheridan. 239 

IS. Genius Bulwer. 240 

19. Hope for Italy . . . % Mariotti. 241 

20. Province of the Historian Schlegel. 242 

21. Protest against Turkish Perfidy Kossuth. 243 

22. Lesson to Ambition Jeffrey. 244 

23. Catholic Restrictions Sydney Smith. 246 

24. Plea to George IV. in Behalf of the Queen Phillips. 247 

25. In Defence of Mr. Finnerty Curran. 248 

26. The Evidence of Mr. O'Brien Curran. 250 

27. Cremutius Cordus's Defence of his Annals Tacitus. 251 

28. Monopolies Culpepper. 252 

29. The Poet's Theme Talfourd. 253 

30. On the Prospect of an Invasion Hall. 254 

31. Universality of Conscience Chalmers. 255 

32. On Parliamentary Reform Fox. 256 

33. Character of Justice Shfridan. 257 

34. The Hour of Destiny Dublin Nation. 258 

35.. The same — -continued Dublin Nation. 260 

36. Vindication from Treason McManus. 262 

37. Vindication from Treason , Meagher. 262 

38. Influence of the Dutch h Boyton. 265 

39. Speech of Galgaeus to the Caledonians Tacitus. 266 

40. Speech of Agricola to his Army in Britain .Tacitus. 268 

41. Invective against ^Eschines Demosthenes. 269 

42. Religious Liberty Sydney Smith. 270 

43. Securities from Catholic Ireland Phillips. 271 

44. Blessings of Education Phillips. 272 

45. Wrongs of Ireland Grattan. 274 

46. On the Funeral of Henrietta Bossuet. 274 

47. Trial of the Church Gilfillan. 275 

48. Duty in Time of War Chalmers. 277 

49. On the Conspiracy of Catiline Cicero. 278 

50. A Defence from Impeachment Marat. 279 

51. Liberty in the Revolution of 1830 St. Chamans. 280 

52. The True Conquerors Brougham. 282 

53. Abolition of the Slave Trade Wilberforce. 283 

54. Futility of Efforts to stay Reform Sydney Smith. 284 

55. Plea of Sergeant Buzfuz in Bardell v. Pickwick Dickens. 285 

56. The same — continued Dickens. 287 

57. Death of Fox Sheridan. 289 

58. On the Reformation in England Milton. 290 

59. Attack of Antwerp Windham. 291 

60. What is the French Revolution ? Lamartine. 292 

61. True Use of Wealth Alison. 293 

62. Yielding to Public Opinion Alison. 294 

63. Decline of the Celtic Race Michelet. 295 

64. Disregard of the Past Talfourd. 297 

65. On the Law of Copyright Talfourd. 298 

66. Hamlet's Address to the Players Shakspeare. 299 

67. True Position of Napoleon Carmenin. 299 



Vlll CONTEXTS. 

PAOR 

68. Qualifications for Soldiers Svdney Smith 301 

69. Grievances of the Engli-h Government Mackintosh. S02 

70. Duty of England to Italy Mackintosh. 803 

71. Defence of the Poet Archias Cicero. 304 

72. Speech of Shrewsbury before Queen Elizabeth Schiller. 306 

73. Mr. Fox and the East India Bill Burke. 307 

74. Detached Empire Burke. 308 

75. Taxation of America Burke. 303 

76. The Heturn of Peace Jeffrey. 309 

77. Glory of Holland and Ireland Boyton. 310 

78. Apparitions Carlyle. 312 

70. The Landed Interest D' Israeli. 313 

80. V indication from Di.-honor .Emmett. 315 

81. Removal of the Troops from Boston Chatham. 31 6 

82 " You cannot Conquer America' 1 Chatham. 317 

83. Days of Desolation Alison. 318 

84. Indulgences to the Catholics Sydney Smith. 319 

85. S fety only in the Republic Lamartine. 320 

8tf. Attachment of a People to their Religion Sydney Smith. 321 

87. Speech of Icilius to the Romans Alfieri. 322 

88. Visions of Joan of Arc and Bishop Beauvais Dk Quincey. 323 

89. The same — continued De Quincey. 32 I 



PART II. 



SELECTIONS OF POETRY. 

1. Seaweed Longfellow. 329 

2. The Winds Bryant. 330 

3. The Steamboat ' Holmes. 331 

4. Death of Osceola Street. 333 

5. Rhyme of the Rail Saxe. 334 

o. Lord of Belmont Tower Praed. 336 

7. Song of the War Mc Master. 337 

8. Press On Willis. 339 

«.». A In wick Castle Hallkck. 340 

10. Quin and Foote Anonymous. 341 

11. 1 he Quality of Mercy Shaksieare. 342 

I 2. From Henry V " Shaksfeake. 342 

13. Sleep SllAKSl'KARE. 313 

1-1. Soliloquy of Macbeth. Shakspeare. 3 14 

15. Venice and America Byron. 3 14 

16. The Dying Gladiator Byron. 346 

17. Lvcidas — A Monody M ii ton. 347 

18. The Hour of Death Hlmans 347 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

19. The Loved Dead Hfmans. 349 

20. Ihe Cloud Sbkllky. 349 

S 1 . Mary's Ghost Hood 350 

22. Battle of Real' an' Duine Scott. 352 

tH. Battle of the Baltic Campbell. 353 

24. Address to an Egyptian Mummy . . . , Horace Smith. 355 

25 The Press Elliott. 356 

20. Tins Height of the Ridiculous Holmes. 357 

27. Horatius Macaulay. 358 

28. Joan of Arc Sterling. 359 

29. Napoleon's Return Browning. 360 

80. The Beleaguered City Longfellow. 362 

31. Antony's Speech over Caesar's Body Shakspeare. 364 

32. The same — continued Shakspeare. 365 

S3. Union Anonymous. 366 

34. The Banner of Murat Wetmore. 367 

35. Tiie Pri oner for Debt Whittier. 36S 

36. A Death Bed A ldrich. 370 

37. Thanatopsis Bryant. 372 

38. Marmion's Departure Scott. 37^ 

39. " To Arms ' Benjamin. 373 

4:0. A Hundred Years Ago Anonymous. 374 

41. The Cold Water Man Saxe. 375 

42. A Sea Fog , Crabbe. 37 7 

43. Funeral of Charles I Bowles. 377 

44. The Four Eras Rogers. 378 

45. Seminole's Reply » Patten. 37 V* 

46. The Rising of the North Procter. 380 

47. The Soldier's Tear , Bayley. 381 

48. Leonidas Cuoly. 382 

49. Byron Pollok. 383 

50. The Drowned Mariner E. Oakes Smith. 384 

51. The Peri's Boon Moore. 385 

52. The Bards Read. 386 

53. Death of Oriska Sigourney. 388 

54. Little Kindnesses Talfourd. 389 

55. Annie Clay ville Gary. 390 

56. The Spirit of my Song Fuller. 391 

57. Pocahontas Morris. 392 

58. A Solemn Conceit Motherwell. 392 

59. The Departed Benjamin. 39-1 

60. Seventy-six Bryant. 395 

61. The Hurricane Bryant. 39'j 

62. Death of Harrison Willis. 397 

63. The Happiest Land Longfellow. 398 

64. Hymn of the Moravi m Nuns Longfellow. 399 

65. The Red Fisherman Praed. 4* 

66. Shy lock to Antonio Shakspeare. 4ol 

67. Speech of Robespierre Coleridge. 402 

68- Morning Meditations Hood. 403 

69. Crystal Fountain Anonymous. 404 

fU, Soug of Steam Cutter. 406 

i* 



1 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

71. Storming of Monterey .Hoffman. 407 

72. Angels of Buena Vista Whittier. 408 

73. Entry of the Austrians into Naples Moore. 411 

74. Forgive and Forget Tupper. 412 

75. Robert Burns Montgomery. 413 

76. Old Ironsides Holmes. 415 

77. The Last Leaf. Holmes. 415 

78. The English Tongue Saxe. 417 

79. Monody\>n Sam Patch Sands. 418 

80. The War Cross Scott. 419 

81. Soliloquy of Richard III Shakspeare. 420 

82. Mathew Lee Dana. 421 

83. The Seven Ages Sbakspeare. 422 

84. Ambition Willis. 423 

85. The Contrast Street. 424 

86. The Pilgrim's Funeral Bryant. 425 

87. March Coxe. 427 

88. Last Days of Autumn Percival. 428 

89. Music of the Night , Neal. 429 

90. My Mother's Grave Prentice. 430 

91. " Passing Away" Pierpont. 431 

92. Shakspeare Ode Sprague. 433 

93. The Ivy and the Vine Bailey. 435 

94. The De; traction of the Universe Bailey. 435 

95. Mazeppu Byron. 436 

96. Universality of Poetry Percival. 438 

97. Greece Byron 438 

98. Fame Byron. 439 

99. Faithless Nelly Gray Hood. 440 

100. The Hat Regained Rejected Addresses. 441 

101. Capture of the Alhambra Anonymous. 442 

102. The Seer Whittier. 443 

1 03. Evening Paulding. 444 

104. Manfred's Soliloquy Byron. 446 

105. Moonlight March Hp;ber. 447 

106. The Guerilla Brainard. 447 

107. I Remember, I Remember Hood. 448 

108. Earth's Angels Anonymous. 449 

109. Address to Spain Byron. * 51 



PART I. 



SELECTIONS OF PROSE 



THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN ELOQUENCE. 



I—ANCIENT AND MODERN ELOQUENCE. 

J. Q. ADAMS. 

With the dissolution of Roman liberty, and the decline of 
Roman taste, the reputation and excellency of the oratorical 
art fell alike into decay. Under the despotism of the Caasars, 
the end of eloquence was perverted from persuasion to pane- 
gyric, and all her faculties were soon palsied by the touch of 
corruption, or enervated by the impotence of servitude. There 
succeeded the midnight of the monkish ages, when with the 
other liberal arts, she slumbered iti the profound darkness of 
the cloister. 

At the revival of letters in modem Europe, Eloquence to- 
gether with her sister muses, awoke, and shook the poppies 
from her brow. But their torpors still tingled in her veins. 
In the interval her voice was gone ; her favorite languages 
were extinct ; her organs were no longer attuned to harmony, 
and her hearers could no longer understand her speech. The 
discordant jargon of feudal anarchy had banished the musical 
dialects, in which she had always delighted. The theatres 
of her former triumph were either deserted, or they were 
filled, with the dabblers of sophistry and chicane. She shrunk 
intuitively from the former, for the last object she remember- 
ed to have seen there was the head of her darling Cicero 
planted upon the rostrum. She ascended the tribunals of 
justice; there she found her child, Persuasion, manacled and 
pinioned by the letter of the law ; there she beheld an image 
of herself, stammering in barbarous Latin, and staggering 
under the lumber of a thousand volumes. Her heart fainted 
within her. She lost all confidence in herself. Together 



14 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

with all her irresistible powers, she lost proportionally the 
consideration of the world, until, instead of comprising the 
whole system of public education, she found herself excluded 
from the circle of science, and declared an outlaw from the 
realms of learning. 

She was not however doomed to eternal silence. With 
the progress of freedom and of liberal science, in various 
parts of modern Europe, she obtained access to mingle in the 
deliberations of her parliaments. With labor and difficulty 
she learned their languages, and lent her aid in giving them 
form and polish. But she has never recovered the graces of 
her former beauty, nor the energies of her ancient vigor. 



U.— DUTY OF AMERICA. 

DANIEL AVEBSTER. 

Neither individuals nor nations can perform their part 
well, until they understand and feel its importance, and com- 
prehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. 
It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and 
empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge 
justly of our situation, and of our duties, that I earnestly 
urge this consideration of our position, and our character, 
among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but by 
those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, 
aud in America, a new era commences in human affairs. 
This era is distinguished by free representative governments, 
by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national 
intercourse, by a newly awakened, and unconquerable spirit 
of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the 
community, such as has been before altogether unknown and 
unheard of. America, America, our country, our own dear and 
native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune 
and by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall 
with them; if they stand, it will be because we have up- 
holden them. Let us contemplate, then, this connection, w r hich 
binds the prosperity of others to our own ; and let us man- 
fully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we cher- 
ish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will 
assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human 



THE ULTIMA THULE. 15 

happiness Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples 
are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon 
our path. Washington is in the clear upper sky. There 
other stars have now joined the American constellation ; they 
circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new 
light. Beneath this illumination, let us walk the course of 
life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, 
the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity. 



III.— THE ULTIMA THULE. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 



When we engage in that solemn study, the history of our 
race ; surveying the progress of man, from his cradle in the 
East to these limits of his wanderings ; when we behold him 
forever flying westward from civil and religious thraldom, 
over mountains and seas, seeking rest and finding none, but 
still pursuing the flying bow of promise to the glittering hills 
which it spans in Hesperian climes ; w r e cannot but exclaim, 
wdtli Bishop Berkeley, the generous prelate, who bestowed 
his benefactions, as well as blessings, on our country, — 

tk Westward the course of empire takes its way ; 
The first four acis already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama wit}] the day ; 
Time's noblest offspring is the last." 

This exclamation is but the embodiment of a vision, which 
the ancients, from the earliest period, cherished of some fa- 
vored land beyond the mountains and the seas ; a land of 
equal law r s and happy men. The primitive poets placed it in 
the Islands of the Blest ; the Doric bards dimly beheld it in 
the Hyperborean region ; the mystical sage of the Academy 
found it in his lost Atlantis ; and even the stern spirit of 
Seneca dreamed of the restoration of the golden age in dis- 
tant worlds, hereafter to be discovered. . Can we look back 
upon these uninspired predictions, and not feel the weight of 
obligations which they imply ? Here must these bright fan- 
cies be turned into truth ; here must these high visions be 
realized, in which the seers and sages of the elder world took 
refuge from the calamities of the days in which they lived. . 



16 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

There are no more continents to be revealed ; Atlantis bath 
arisen from the ocean ; the farthest thule is reached ; there 
are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more discoveries, no 
more hopes. 



IV.— OUR RELATION TO EUROPE. 

HENRY CLAY. 

Sir, gentlemen appear to me to forget that they stand on 
American soil ; that they are not in the British House of 
Commons, but in the Chamber of the House of Representa- 
tives of the United States ; that we have nothing to do with 
the affairs of Europe, the partition of territory and sovereignty 
there, except so far as these things affect the interests of our 
own country. Gentlemen transform themselves into the 
Burkes, Chathams, and Pitts, of another country, and forget- 
ting, from honest zeal, the interests of America, engage with 
European sensibility in the discussion of European interests. 
If the gentlemen ask me whether I do not view with regret 
and horror the concentration of such vast power in the hanos 
of Bonaparte, I reply that I do ; I regret to see the Emperor 
of China holding such immense sway over the fortunes of 
millions of our species ; I regret to see Great Britaiu possess- 
ing so uncontrolled a command over all the waters of our 
globe. H I had the ability to distribute among the nations 
of Europe, their several portions of sovereignty and power, I 
would say, that Holland should be reinstated, and given the 
weight she enjoyed in the days of her De Witts. I would 
confine France within her natural boundaries, the Alps, 
Pyrenees, and the Rhine, and make her a secondary naval 
power only. I would abridge the British maritime power, 
raise Prussia and Austria to their original conditions, and 
preserve the integrity of the empire of Russia. But these 
are speculations. I look at the political transactions of 
Europe, with the single exception of their possible bearing upon 
us, as 1 do at the history of other countries, or other times. I do 
not survey them with half the interest that I do the move- 
ments in South America Our political relation with them 
is much less important than it is supposed to be. I have no 
fears of French or English subjugation. If we are united wo 



TIIE NAME OF REPUBLIC. 17 

are too powerful for the mightiest nation .1 Europe, or al] 
Europe combined. If we are separated ant orn asunder, we 
shall become an easy prey to the weakest o them. In the 
latter dreadful contingency, our country will not be worth 
preserving. 



V.— THE NAME OF REPUBLIC. 

HUGH S. LEG ARE. 

The name of Republic is inscribed upon the most imperish- 
able monuments of the species, and it is probable that it will 
continue to be associated, as it has been in all past ages, with 
whatever is heroic in character, sublime in genius, and 
elegant and brilliant in the cultivation of arts and letters. 
What land has ever been visited with the influence of liberty, 
that did not flourish like the spring ? What people has ever 
worshipped at her altars without kindling with a loftier 
spirit, and putting forth more noble energies ? Where has 
she ever acted that her deeds have not been heroic ? Where 
has she ever spoken, that her eloquence has not been trium- 
phant and sublime ? 

Is it 7iothing then to he free ? How many nations, in the 
whole annals of human kind, have proved themselves worthy 
of being so ? Is it nothing that we are Republicans ? Were 
all men as enlightened, as brave, as proud as they ought to 
be, would they suffer themselves to be insulted with any other 
title ? Is it nothing that so many independent sovereignties 
should he held together in such a confederacy as ours ? 
What does history teach us of the difficulty of instituting and 
maintaining such a polity, and of the glory that, of consequence, 
ought to be given to those who enjoy its advantages in so 
much perfection, and on so grand a scale ? For, can any* 
thing be more striking and sublime than the idea of an 
Imperial Ilejniblic, spreading over an extent of territory, 
more immense than the empire of the Caesars, in the accumu- 
lated conquests of a thousand years — without prsefects, or 
proconsuls, or publicans — founded in the maxims of common 
sense — employing within itself no arms hut those of reason — 
and known to its subjects only hy the hlessings it bestows or 
perpetuates, yet capable of directing, against a foreign foe, 



18 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

all the energies f a military despotism — a Republic in which 
men are compl >ely insignificant, and princijrtes and laius 
exercise, throughout its vast dominion, a peaceful and irresist- 
ible sway, blending in one divine harmony, such various 
habits and conflicting opinions ; and mingling in our institu- 
tions the light of philosophy, with all that is dazzling in the 
associations of heroic achievement and extended domination, 
and deep-seated and formidable power ! 



VI— EULOGIUM ON ANDREW JACKSON. 

GEORGE BANCROFT. 

No man in private life so possessed the hearts of all around 
him — no public man of this century, ever returned to private 
Kfe with such an abiding mastery over the affections of the 
people. No man with truer instinct received American 
ideas — no man expressed them so completely, or so boldly 
or so sincerely. He was as sincere a man as ever lived. He 
was wholly, always, and altogether sincere and true. Up to 
the last, he dared to do anything that it was right to do. 
He united personal courage and moral courage beyond any 
man of whom history keeps the record. Before the nation, 
before the world, before coming ages, he stands forth the 
representative, for his generation, of the American mind. 
And the secret of his greatness is this : by intuitive con- 
ception, he shared and possessed all the creative ideas of his 
country and his time. He expressed them with dauntless 
intrepidity ; he enforced them with an immovable will ; he 
executed them with an electric power, that attracted and 
swayed the American people. The nation, in his time, had 
not one great thought, of which he was not the boldest and 
clearest expositor. 

History does not describe the man that equalled him in 
firmness of nerve. Not danger, not an army in battle array, 
not wounds, not wide-spread clamor, not age, not the anguish 
of disease, could impair, in the least degree, the vigor of his 
steadfast mind. The heroes of antiquity, would have con- 
templated with awe the unmatched hardihood of his charac- 
ter ; and Napoleon, had he possessed his disinterested will, 
«ould never have been vanquished. Andrew Jackson never 



INJUSTICE TOWARD KOSSUTH. 19 

was vanquished. He was always fortunate. He conquered 
the wilderness ; he conquered the savage ; he conquered the 
bravest veterans trained in the battle-fields of Europe ; ho 
conquered everywhere in statesmanship ; and, when death 
came to get the mastery over him, he turned that last enemy 
aside as tranquilly as he had done the feehlest of his adver- 
saries, and escaped from earth in the triumphant consciousness 
of immortality. 

His body has its fit resting-place in the great central val- 
ley of the Mississippi ; his spirit rests upon our whole territo- 
ry ; it hovers over the vales of Oregon, and guards, in ad- 
vance, the frontier of Del Xorte. The fires of party spirit are 
quenched at his grave. His faults and frailties have perished. 
Whaterei of good he has done, lives, and will live forever. 



VII— INJUSTICE TOWARD KOSSUTH. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

The Emperor of Russia demands of Turkey that the noble 
Kossuth and his companions shall be given up. This demand 
is made in derision of the established law of nations. Gen- 
tlemen, there is something on earth greater than arbitrary or 
despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirl- 
wind has its power, and the earthquake has its power. But 
there is something among men more capable of shaking des- 
potic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake, — that 
is the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world. 

The Emperor of Russia holds himself to be bound by the 
law of nations, from the fact that he treats with nations — 
that he forms alliances — he professes in fact to live in a civil- 
ized age, and to govern an enlightened nation. I say, that if, 
under these circumstances, he shall perpetrate so great a vi- 
olation of natural law, as to seize these Hungarians, and to 
execute them, he will stand as a criminal and malefactor in 
the view of the law. The whole world will be the tribunal 
to try him, and he must appear before it, and hold up his 
hand, and plead, and abide its judgment. The Emperor of 
Russia is the supreme lawgiver in his own country, and for 
aught I know, the executor of it also. But, thanks be to 
God, he is not the supreme lawgiver or executor of the national 



20 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

law, and every offence against that is an offence against 
the rights of the civilized world ; and if he breaks that law 
in the case of Turkey, or in any other case, the whole world 
has a right to call him out and demand his punishment Our 
rights as a nation are held under the sanction of national 
law — a lav/ which becomes more important from day to day — 
a law which none who profess to agree to, are at liberty to 
violate. Nor let him imagine, nor let any one imagine, that 
mere force can subdue the general sentiment of mankind. It 
is much more likely to extend that sentiment, and to destroy 
that power which he most desires to establish and secure. 
The bones of poor John Wickliffe were dug out of his grave 
seventy years after his death, and burnt, for his heresy, and 
his ashes were thrown upon a river in Warwickshire. Some 
prophet of that day said : 

" The Avon to the Severn runs, 
The Severn to the sea, 
And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad 
Wide as the waters be." 

Gentlemen, if the blood of Kossuth is taken by an absolute, 
unqualified, unjustifiable violation of national law, what will 
it appease — what will it pacify ? It will mingle with the 
earth — it will mix with the waters of the ocean — the whole 
civilized world will snuffit in the air, and it will return with 
awful retribution on the heads of those violators of .national 
law and universal justice. I cannot say when, or in what 
ibrm ; but depend upon it, that if such an act take place, the 
thrones and principalities and powers must look out for the 
consequences. 



VIII— IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY PURSUITS. 

A. H. EVERETT. 

Independence and liberty, the great political objects of all 
communities, have been secured to us by our glorious ances- 
tors. In these respects, we are only required to preserve and 
transmit unimpaired to our posterity the inheritance which our 
fathers bequeathed to us. To the present, and to the follow- 
ing generations, is left the easier task of enriching with arts 



IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY PURSUITS. 21 

and letters, the proud fabric of our national glory. Oar Sparta 
:s indeed a noble one. Let us then do our best for it. 

It will belong to your position to take the lead in arts and 
letters, as in policy, and to give the tone to the literature of 
the language. Let it be your care and study not to show 
yourselves unequal to this high calling, — to vindicate the 
honor of the new world in this generous and friendly compe- 
tition with the old. You will perhaps be told that literary 
pursuits will disqualify you for the active business of life. 
Heed not the idle assertion. Reject it as a mere imagination, 
inconsistent with principle, unsupported by experience. Point 
out to those who make it, the illustrious characters who have 
reaped in every age the highest honors of studious and active 
exertion. Show them Demosthenes, forging by the light of 
the midnight lamp those thunderbolts of eloquence which 

" Shook the arsenal and ful mined over Greece — 
To Macedou and Artaxerxes' throne," 

Ask them if Cicero would have been hailed with rapture as 
the father of his country, if he had not been its pride and pat- 
tern in philosophy and letters. Inquire whether Caesar, or 
Frederick, or Bonaparte, or Wellington, or Washington, fbnght 
the worse because they knew how to write their own com- 
mentaries. Remind them of Franklin, tearing at the same 
time the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the 
hands of the oppressor. Do they say to you that study will 
lead you to skepticism ? Recall to their memory the venerable 
names of Bacon, Milton, Newton and Locke. Would they 
persuade you that devotion to learning will withdraw your 
steps from the paths of pleasure ? Tell them they are mis- 
taken. Tell them that the only true pleasures are those 
which result from the diligent exercise of all the faculties of 
body, and mind, and heart, in pursuit of noble ends by noble 
means. Repeat to them the ancient apologue of the youthful 
Hercules, in the pride of strength and beauty, giving up his 
generous soul to the worship of virtue. Tell them your choice 
is also made. Tell them, with the illustrious Roman orator, 
you would rather be in the wrong with Plato, than in the right 
with Epicurus. Tell them that a mother in Sparta would 
have rather seen her son brought home from battle a corpse 
upon his shield, than dishonored by its loss. Tell them that 
your mother is America, your battle the warfare of life, your 
shield the breastplate of Religion. 



22 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

IX.— FREEDOM AND PATRIOTISM. 

ORVILLE DEWEY. 

God has stamped upon our very humanity this impress of 
freedom. It is the unchartered prerogative of human nature. 
A soul ceases to be a soul, in proportion as it ceases to be free. 
Strip it of this, and you strip it of one of its essential and char- 
acteristic attributes. It is this that draws the footsteps of the 
wild Indian to his wide and boundless desert-paths, and makes 
him prefer them to the gay saloons and soft carpets of sump- 
tuous palaces. It is this that makes it so difficult to bring 
him within the pale of artificial civilization. Our roving 
tribes are perishing — a sad and solemn sacrifice upon the altar 
of their wild freedom. They come among us, and look with 
childish wonder upon the perfection of our arts, and the splen- 
dor of our habitations : they submit with ennui and weariness, 
for a few days, to our burdensome forms and restraints ; and 
then turn their faces to their forest homes, and resolve to push 
those homes onward till they s':nk in the Pacific waves, rather 
than not be free. 

It is thus that every people is attached to its country, just 
in proportion as it is free. No matter if that country be in 
the rocky fastnesses of Switzerland, amidst the snows of Tar- 
tary, or on the most barren and lonely island-shore ; no mat- 
ter if that country be so poor as to force away its children to 
other and richer lands, for employment and sustenance ; yet 
when the songs of those free homes chance to fall upon the 
exile's ear, no soft and ravishing airs that wait upon the 
timid (eastings of Asiatic opulence ever thrilled the heart 
with such mingled rapture and agony as those simple tones. 
Sad mementos might they be of poverty and Want and toil ; 
yet it was enough that they were mementos of happy free- 
dom. 

I have seen my countrymen, and I have been with them a 
fellow wanderer, in other lands ; and little did I see or feel to 
warrant the apprehension, sometimes expressed, that foreign 
travel would weaken our patriotic attachments. One sigh 
for home — home, arose from all hearts. And why, from 
palaces and courts — why, from galleries of the arts, where 
the marble softens into life, and painting sheds an almost 
living presence of beauty around it — why, from the moun- 
tain's awful brow, and the lonely valleys and lakes touched 



TEACHINGS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION". 23 

with the sunset hues of old romance — why, from those vene- 
rable and touching ruins to which our very heart grows — ■ 
why, from all these scenes, were they looking beyond the 
swellings of the xAtlantic wave, to a dearer and holier spot 
of earth— their own. own country ? Doubtless, it was in part 
because it is their country ! But it was also, as every one's 
experience will testify, because they knew that there was no 
oppression, no pitiful exaction of petty tyranny ; because 
that there, they knew was no accredited and irresistible reli- 
gious domination ; because that there, they knew, they should 
not meet the odious soldier at every corner, nor swarms of 
imploring beggars, the victims of misrule ; that there, no 
curse causeless did fall, and no blight, worse than plague and 
pestilence, did descend amidst the pure dews of heaven ; be- 
cause, in fine, that there, they knew, was liberty — upon all 
the green hills, and amidst all the peaceful villages — liberty, 
the wall of fire around the humblest home ; the crown of 
glory, studded with her ever-blazing stars upon the proudest 
mansion ! 



X.— TEACHINGS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

J A RED SPARKS. 

Happy was it for America, happy for the world, that a 
great name, a guardian genius, presided over her destinies in 
war, combining more than the virtues of the Roman Fabius 
and the Theban Epaminondas, and compared with whom, 
the conquerors of the world, the Alexanders and Caesars, are 
but pageants crimsoned with blood and decked with the 
trophies of slaughter, objects equally of the wonder and the 
execration of mankind. The hero of America was the con- 
queror only of his country's foes, and the hearts of his coun- 
trymen. To the one he was a terror, and in the other he 
gained an ascendency, supreme, unrivalled, the tribute of 
admiring gratitude, the reward of a nation's love. 

The American armies, compared with the embattled 
legions of the old world, were small in numbers, but the soul 
of a whole people centred in the bosom of those more than 
Spartan bands, and vibrated quickly and keenly with every 
incident that befell them, whether in their feats of valor, or 
the acuteness of their sufferings. The country itself was one 



24 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

wide battle-field, in which not merely the life-blood, but the 
dearest interests, the sustaining hopes, of every individual, 
were at stake. It was not a war of pride and ambition be- 
tween monarchs. in which an island or a province might be 
the award of success ; it was a contest for personal liberty 
and civil rights, corning down in its principles to the very 
sanctuary of home and the fireside, and determining for 
every man the measure of responsibility he should hold over 
his own condition, possessions and happiness. The spectacle 
was grand and new, and may well be cited as the most 
glowing page in the annals of progressive man. 

The instructive lesson of history, teaching by example, can 
nowhere be studied with more profit, or with a better 
promise, than in this revolutionary period of America ; and 
especially by us, who sit under the tree our fathers have 
planted, enjoy its shade, and are nourished by its fruits. But 
little is our merit, or gain, that we applaud their deeds, 
unless we emulate their virtues. Love of country was in 
them an absorbing principle, an undivided feeling ; not of a 
fragment, a section, but of the whole country. Union was 
the arch on which they raised the strong tower of a nation's 
independence. Let the arm be palsied, that would loosen 
one stone in the basis of this fair structure, or mar its beauty ; 
the tongue mute, that would dishonor their names, by calcu- 
lating the value of that which they deemed without price. 

They have left us an example already inscribed in the 
world's memory ; an example portentous to the aims of tyr- 
anny in every land ; an example that w T ill console in all 
ages the drooping aspirations of oppressed humanity. They 
have left us a written charter as a legacy, and as a guide to 
our course. But every day convinces us, that a written 
charter may become powerless. Ignorance may misinterpret 
it ; ambition may assail, and faction destroy its vital parts ; 
and aspiring knavery may at last sing its requiem on the 
tomb of departed liberty. It is the spirit which lives ; in 
this is our safety and our hope ; the spirit of our fathers ; 
and while this dwells deeply in our remembrance, and its 
flame is cherished, ever burning, ever pure, on the altar of 
our hearts ; while it incites us to think as they have thought, 
and do as they have done, the honor and the praise will be 
ours, to have preserved unimpaired the rich inheritance, 
which they so nobly achieved. 



THE PRESENT AGE. 25 



XL— THE PRESENT AGE. 

W. E. CHANNING, 

The Present Age. In these brief words what a world of 
thought is comprehended ! what infinite movements ! what 
joys and sorrows ! what hope and despair ! what faith and 
doubt ! what silent grief and loud lament ! what fierce con- 
flicts and subtle schemes of policy ! what private and public 
revolutions ! In the period through which many of us have 
passed, what thrones have been shaken ! what hearts have 
bled ! what millions have been butchered by their fellow- 
creatures ! what hopes of philanthropy have been blighted ! 
and at the same time what magnificent enterprises have been 
achieved ! what new provinces won to science and art ! what 
rights and liberties secured to nations ! It is a privilege to 
have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It 
is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and 
°ncouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is 
*ndeiible. Amidst its events, the American Revolution, the 
first distinct, solemn assertion of the rights of men, and the 
.French He volution, that volcanic force which shook the earth 
to its centre, are never to pass from men's minds. Over this 
age the night will, indeed, gather more and more as time 
lolls away ; but in that night two forms will appear, Wash- 
ington and Napoleon, the one a lurid meteor, the other a 
benign, serene, and undecayi ug star. Another American name 
will live in history, your Franklin ; and the kite which 
brought lightning from heaven, will be seen sailing in the 
clouds by remote posterity, when the city where he dwelt 
may be known only by its ruins. There is, however, some- 
thing greater in the age than its greatest men ; it is the ap- 
pearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the 
multitude of men on the stage where as yet the few have 
acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the 
end of time. What more of the present is to survive ? Per- 
haps much, of which we now take no note. The glory of an 
age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has been 
spoken in our day which we have not deigned to hear, but 
w r hich is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Per- 
haps some silent thinker among us is at work in his closet 
whose name is to fill the earth. Perhaps there sleeps in his 
cradle s me reformer who is to move the church, and the 

2 



26 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the 
human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to 
survive the age ? That which the age has little thought of, 
but which is living in us all ; I mean the soul, the immortal 
spirit — of this all ages are the unfold ings, and it is greater 
than all. We must not feel, in the contemplation of the 
vast movements in our own and former times, as if we our- 
selves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. 
We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pro- 
nounce its sentence. 



XIL— STATE VETO POWER. 

JOHN C. CALHOUN. 



I am not surprised that, with the idea of a perfect govern- 
ment which the Senator from Massachusetts has formed — a 
government of an absolute majority, unchecked and unre- 
strained, operating through a representative body — that he is 
so much shocked with what he is pleased to call the absurdity 
of State veto. But let me tell him, that his scheme of a 
perfect government, beautiful as he conceives it to be, though 
often tried, has invariably failed, and has always ran, when- 
ever tried, through the same uniform process of faction, 
corruption, anarchy, and despotism He considers the repre- 
sentative principle as the great modern improvement in 
legislation, and of itself sufficient to secure liberty. I can no; 
regard it in the light in which he does. Instead of modern, 
it is of remote origin, and has existed in greater or less* per- 
fection, in every free state, from the remotest antiquity. Nor 
do I consider it as of itself sufficient to secure liberty, though 
I regard it as one of the indispensable means — the means of 
securing the people against the tyranny and oppression of 
their rulers. To secure liberty, another means is still neces- 
sary — the means of securing the different portions of society, 
against the injustice and oppression of each oth«*, which 
can only be effected by veto, interposition, or nullification, or 
by whatever name the restraining or negative power oi' 
Government may be called. 

The Senator seems to be enamored with his conception of 
a consolidated government, and avows himself to be prepared, 






STATE VETO POWER. 27 

seeking no lead, to rush in its defence to the front rank, 
where the blows fall heaviest and thickest. I admire his 
gallantry and courage ; but I will tell him that he will find 
in the opposite ranks, under the flag of liberty, spirits as gal- 
lant as his own ; and that experience will teach him, that it 
is infinitely easier to carry on a war of legislative exaction, 
by bills and enactments, than to extort by sword and bayonet 
from the brave and the free. 

We are told, in order to justify the passage of this fatal 
measure, that it was necessary to present the olive branch 
with one hand, and the sword with the other. We scorn the 
alternative. You have no right to present the sword ; the 
Constitution never put the instrument in your hands to be 
employed against a State ; and as to the olive branch, 
whether we receive it or not. will not depend on your 
menace, but on our own estimation of what is due to ourselves 
and the rest of the community, in reference to the difficult 
subject on which we have taken issue. 



XIIL-STATE VETO POWER. 

DANIEL WEBSTER, 



I cannot recognize any right in a State to arrest and repeal 
the legislation of Congress. I could not forget the past, nor 
shut my eyes to the fact that the present alarming extent and 
threatening form of a resistance and defiance, have been 
consequent upon the tolerated practical nullification of the 
State of Georgia. The gentleman from South Carolina, has 
assured us that such is the fact ; attempts have been vainly 
made to find a distinction between the two. In principle 
they are identical. I regret that the gentleman from Georgia, 
in his endeavor to render his defence of the one, consistent 
with the condemnation of the other, has deemed it necessary 
to assail the Supreme Court of the United States — to pro- 
nounce the reasoning and argument of one of its most impor- 
tant decisions to be unworthy the lowest county court in any 
of the States ! I can assure the gentleman that the country 
regards it far otherwise, and that the most vigorous and 
gifted minds deem it one of the most powerful productions of 
the wonderful intellect of the revered chief of that august 



28 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

tribunal. If, in the inscrutable ways of Providence, our 
institutions are destined to be subverted, and left in ruins by 
the convulsions of revolution, that uecision and^c\ + ^ p j^idred 
constitutional opinions from the same mine, .ain to 

after generations, splendid and enduring monumfcxits of intel- 
lectual and moral greatness, and, like the broken columns and 
classic remains of Athens and Palmyra, be the wonder and 
admiration of successive ages. The time has arrived when 
the progress of nullification must be arrested, or the hopes of 
permanent union surrendered. The gentleman assures us 
that his theory would make this government a beautiful 
system ! Beautiful as would be the proud and polished 
pillars which surround us, if resolved into their original rude 
and paltry pebbles ; beautiful as the dashed mirror, from 
whose fragments are reflected twenty-four pigmy portraits, 
instead of one gigantic and noble original ! The triumph of 
.hat doctrine dissolves the union. It must be eo regarded by 
foreign nations ; it is almost so even now. Already have the 
exultations of the oppressor, and the laments of the philan- 
thropist, been heard beyond the Atlantic They have looked 
with fear and hope, with wonder and delight, upon the 
brilliant and beautiful constellation in our western hemi- 
sphere, moving in majestic harmony, irradiating the earth 
with its mild and benignant beams. Shall these stars now 
be severed and scattered, and rushing from their orbits 
through the troubled air, singly and feebly sink into clouds 
of murky blackness, leaving the world in rayless night ? 
Shall the flag of our common country, the ensign of our 
nation, which has waved ill honor upon every sea — the 
guardian of our common rights — the herald of our common 
glory — be severed and torn into twenty-four fragments ; and 
our ships hereafter display for their protection but a tattered 
rag of one of its stripes ? 



XIV.— VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH. 

J. CLEMENS. 

How stands the account of personal services ? It was a 
Southern man who pointed out the road from bondage to 
independence ; who led you triumphantly through the perils 



TIES THAT BIND THE WEST TO US. 29 

of a seven years' war, and sternly refused the diadem with 
which a grateful soldiery < ould have crowned him. It was 
a Sou ueral and Southern soldiers who breasted the 

British u^ ois at New Orleans, and added one of its bright- 
est chapters to the history of the Republic. Southern blood 
has watered every plain from the St. Lawrence to the 
capital of the Aztecs. The memorable fields of Palo Alto, 
and Resaca de la Palma were won by a Southern general 
It was before the genius of a Southern leader, that the walls 
and towers of Monterey crumbled into dust ; and two South- 
ern regiments, struggling side by side in a glorious rivalry, 
snatched from the cannon's mouth the palm of victory. In 
the narrow gorge of Angostura, Southern valor again stemmed 
the tide of war, and rolled back the murderous charges of 
the foe. On the sands of Vera Cruz, another great name 
which the South has given to history and renown, added to 
a fame already imperishable, and wrung from the reluctant 
nations of the Old World, plaudits which they could not with- 
hold. At Cerro Gordo, the story of Southern achievements 
was re-written in blood ; and among the rocks and volcanoes 
of Contreras, the glorious old Palmetto State vindicated her 
right to the title of chivalrous, and silenced forever the 
tongues of her detractors. Sir, I mean to indulge in no dis- 
paragement of the North. She has furnished gallant men 
who have done their duty nobly upon the field. I would not, 
if I could, tear a single laurel from her brow. But I claim 
that the record gives to us at least an equality of the common 
dangers, the common sufferings, and the common triumphs, 
and I demand an equal participation in the rights they have 
established. 



XV.— TIES THAT BIND THE WEST TO US. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

The states and nations which are springing up in the val- 
ley of the Missouri, are bound to us by the dearest ties of a 
common language, a common government, and a common 
descent. Before New England can look with coldness on their 
rising myriads, she must forget that some of her own best 
blood is beating in their veins ; that her hardy children, with 



30 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

their axes on their shoulders, have been among the pioneers 
m the march of humanity ; that young as she is, she has be- 
come the mother of populous states. What generous mind 
would sacrifice to a selfish preservation of local preponderance 
the delight of beholding civilized nations rising up in the des- 
ert ; and the language, the manners, the principles in which 
he has been reared, carried, with his household gods, to the 
foot of the Rocky Mountains ? Who can forget, that this ex- 
tension of our territorial limits is the extension of the empire 
of all we hold dear ; of our laws, of our character, of the mem- 
ory of our ancestors, of the great achievements in our histo- 
ry ? Whithersoever the sons of the thirteen States shall wan- 
der, to the southern or western climes, they will send back 
their hearts to the rocky shores, the fertile fields, the infant 
settlements of the Atlantic coast. These are placed beyond 
the reach of vicissitude. They have already become matter 
of history, of poetry, of eloquence. 

Divisions may spring up, ill blood may burn, parties be 
formed, and interests may seem to clash ; but the great bonds 
of the nation are linked to what is past. The deeds of 
the great men, to whom this country owes its origin and 
growth, are a patrimony, I know, of which its children will 
never deprive themselves. As long as the Mississippi and 
Missouri shall flow, those men, and those deeds, will be re- 
membered on their banks. The sceptre of government may 
go where it will ; but that of patriotic feeling can never de- 
part from Judah. In all that mighty region which is drained 
by the Missouri and its tributary streams, — the valley coex- 
tensive, in this country, with the temperate zone, — will there 
be, as long as the name of America shall last, a father that 
will not take his children on his Knee, and recount to them 
the events of the twenty-second of December, the nineteenth 
of April, the seventeenth of June, and the fourth of July ? 

This then is the theatre on which the intellect of America 
is to appear, and such the motives to its exertion ; such the 
mass to be influenced by its energies ; such the glory to crown 
its success. If I err in this happy vision of my country's for- 
tunes, I thank Heaven for an error so animating. If this be 
false, may I never know the truth. 



PATRIOTIC APPEAL. 31 

XVI.— PATRIOTIC APPEAL. 

J. MCDOWELL. 

GrvE us but a part of that devotion which glowed in the 
heart of the younger Pitt, and of our own elder Adams, who, 
in the midst of their agonies, forgot not the countries they had 
lived for, but mingled with the spasms of their dying hour a 
las» and imploring appeal to the Parent of all Mercies that he 
would remember, in eternal blessings, the land of their birth : 
give us their devotion, give us that of the young enthusiast of 
Paris, who listening to Mirabeau in one of his surpassing vin- 
dications of human right, and seeing him fall from his stand, 
dying, as a physician proclaimed, for the want of blood, rushed 
to the spot, and as he bent over the expiring man, bared his 
arm for the lancet, and cried again, and again, with impas- 
sioned voice — " Here, take it — take it — oh ! take it from me, 
let me die, so that Mirabeau and the liberties of my country 
may not perish !" Give us something only of such a spirit as 
this — something only of such a love of country, and we are 
safe, forever safe : the troubles which shadow over and op- 
press us now, will pass away as a summer cloud. No measure 
of unalienable wrong, no measure of unconquerable disagree- 
ment, will be pressed upon us here. The fatal element of all 
our discord will be taken from amongst us. Let gentlemen be 
entreated to remove it as the one only and solitary obstacle to 
our perfect peace. Let them be adjured by the weal of this 
and coming ages — by our own and our children's good — by all 
that we love or that we look for in the progress and the glo- 
ries of our land, to leave the entire subject of slavery, with 
every accountability it may impose, every remedy it may re- 
quire, every accumulation of difficulty or pressure it may 
reach ; to leave it all to the interest, to the wisdom, and to the 
conscience of those upon whom the providence of God and the 
Constitution of their country have cast it. Leave it to them 
now and forever, and stop, whilst it is yet possible to stop, the 
furious and blind headway of that wild and mad philanthropy, 
which is lighting up for the nation itself the fires of the stake, 
and which is rushing on, stride after stride, to an intestine 
struggle that may bring us all under a harder, and wickeder 
and more incurable slavery, than any it would extinguish. 



32 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XVII— CALIFORNIA AND PLYMOUTH ROCK. 

THOMAS H. BENTON. 

Let us vote upon the measures before us, beginning with 
the admission of California. Let us vote her in. Let us vote, 
after four months' talk. The people who have gone there 
have done honor to the American name. Starting from a 
thousand points, and meeting as strangers far removed from 
law and government, they have conducted themselves with 
the order, decorum and justice, which would have done honor 
to the oldest established and best regulated community. They 
have carried our institutions to the furthest verge of the 
land — to the coast of the Pacific, and lit it up with the lights 
of religion, liberty, and science — lights which will shine 
across the broad ocean, and illuminate the dark recesses of 
benighted Asia. They have completed the work of the Pil- 
grim Fathers. Would to God that those who landed on the 
Rock, and on the banks of the James river, more than two 
hundred years ago, and who crossed the stormy Atlantic in 
search of civil and religious liberty, and who did so much for 
both in their day and generation, could now see what has 
been done in our day ! could look down from their celestial 
abodes, and see the spark which they struck from the flint 
now blazing with a light which fixes the gaze of the world — 
see the mustard seed which they planted, now towering to the 
skies, and spreading its branches from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. With what rapture would they welcome the Pil- 
grims of California into the family circle, while we, their de- 
scendants, sit here in angry debate, repulsing our brethren, 
calculating the value of the Union, and threatening to rend it 
asunder if California is admitted. 



XVIIL— THE HONOR OF WAR. 

W. E. CHANNINO. 

That the idea of glory should be associated strongly with 
military exploits, ought not to be wondered at. From the 
earliest ages, ambitious sovereigns and states have sought to 
spread the military spirit, by loading it with rewards. 



THE HONOR OF WAR. 33 

Badges, ornaments, distinctions, the most flattering and 
intoxicating, have been the prizes of war. The aristocracy 
of Europe, which commenced in barbarous ages, was founded 
on military talent and success ; and the chief education of 
the young noble, was, for a long time, little more than a 
training for battle, — hence the strong connection between 
war and honor. All past ages have bequeathed us this pre- 
judice, and the structure of society has given it a fearful 
force. Let us consider it with some particularity. 

The idea of honor is associated with war. But to whom 
does the honor belong ? If to any, certainly not to the mass 
of the people, but to those who are particularly engaged in it. 
The mass of a people, who stay at home, and hire others to 
fight — who sleep in their warm beds, and hire others to sleep 
on the cold and damp earth, — who sit at their well-spread 
board, and hire others to take their chance of starving — who 
nurse the slightest hurt on their own bodies, and hire others 
to expose themselves to mortal wounds and to linger in com- 
fortless hospitals ; certainly this mass reap little honor from 
war ; the honor belongs to those immediately engaged in it 
Let me ask, then, what is the chief business of war ? It is to 
destroy human life ; to mangle the limbs ; to gash and hew 
the body ; to plunge the sword into the heart of a fellow- 
creature ; to strew the earth with bleeding frames, and to 
trample them under foot with horses' hoofs. It is to battel 
down and burn cities ; to turn fruitful fields into deserts ; to 
level the cottage of the peasant and the magnificent abode 
of opulence ; to scourge nations with famine ; to multiply 
widows and orphans. Are these honorable deeds ? Were 
you called to name exploits worthy of demons, would you cioi 
naturally select such as these ? Grant that a necessity for 
them may exist ; it is a dreadful necessity, such as a good 
man must recoil from with instinctive horror ; and though it 
may exempt them from guilt, it cannot turn them into glory. 
We have thought that it was honorable to heal, to save, to 
mitigate pain, to snatch the sick and sinking from the jaws 
of death. We have placed among the revered benefactors 
of the human race, the discoverers of arts which alleviate 
human sufferings, which prolong, comfort, adorn, and cheei 
human life ; and if these arts be honorable, where is the 
glory of multiplying and aggravating tortures and death ? 

2* 



34 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XIX— DANGER OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES. 

FISHER AMES. 

If any should maintain that the peace with the Indiana 
would be stable without the posts, to them I will urge 
another reply. From arguments calculated to procure con- 
viction, I will appeal directly to the hearts of those who heai 
me, and ask, whether it is not already planted there ? I 
resort especially to the convictions of the Western gentlemen, 
whether, supposing no posts and no treaty, the settlers will 
remain in security ? Can they take it upon them to say, that 
an Indian peace, under these circumstances, will prove firm ? 
No, sir, it will not be peace, but a sword ; it will be no 
better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the 
tomahawk. 

On this theme my emotions are unutterable. If I could 
find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my 
zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, 
it should reach every log house beyond the mountains. I 
would say to the inhabitants, wake from your false security ; 
your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon 
to be renewed ; the wounds, yet unhealed, are to be torn 
open again ; in the day-time your path through the woods 
will be ambushed ; the darkness of midnight will glitter with 
the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father — the blood of 
your sons shall fatten your corn-field : you are a mother — 
the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle. 

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on 
your feelings ; it is a spectacle of horror which cannot be 
overdrawn. If you have nature in your hearts, they will 
speak a language, compared with which, all I have said, or 
can say, will be poor and frigid. Will any one deny that 
we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the 
most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give ? Are 
despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to 
the tears and blood of their subjects ? Are republicans 
irresponsible ? Have the principles on which you ground the 
reproach upon cabinets and kings, no practical influence, no 
binding force ? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, 
introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or 
to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of that 
State House ? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too 



NOMINAL WAR. - 35 

late to ask : Can you put the dearest interests of society at 
risk without guilt, and without remorse ? There is no mis- 
take in this case ; there can be none : experience has already 
been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future vic- 
tims have already reached us. The Western inhabitants are 
not a silent or uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of human- 
ity issues from the shade of the wilderness ; it exclaims that, 
while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other 
grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the 
scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagina- 
tion to conceive that events so near are already begun I 
can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance, and 
the shrieks of torture ; already they seem to sigh in the 
Western wind ; already they mingle with every echo from 
the mountains. 



XX.— NOMINAL WAR. 

JOHN RANDOLPH. 

But, sir, I shall be told, perhaps, that there is only a 
nominal war between Spain and those belligerents — that 
there is nothing else — a war of name : and that Spain is 
unable any longer to wag a finger, to use a familiar phrase', 
or anything but her tongue in the contest. If that be the 
condition of Spain, by what arguments can king-craft and 
priest-craft be prevailed on to remove this nominal claim, 
which will, like some others, keep cold until the chapter of 
accidents may realize it ? Did Philip the Second ever recog- 
nize the independence of the Dutch, when that independence 
was more firmly established than his own ? No, sir, Spain 
is made of sterner stuff. Truce after truce was patched up 
without any such recognition- — and they were the United 
Provinces, and so remained till France gave them the coup 
de grace by the true fraternal hug. What, sir, was the con- 
dition of the war between England and France a little while 
ago — one not having a ship at sea, except a few frigates, 
which she employed in burning our ships in a friendly w r ay, 
so as to induce us to join in making a diversion in aid of her 
crusade against Moscow — from which I hope we shall take 
warning ; for that attempt was not only plausible, but 



36 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

promised success — was quite practicable, compared to the 
crusade to which I have alluded — and England had not a 
man. at the time I speak of, after the battle of Jena, in arms 
on her side, on the continent of Europe — not one man ; and 
there they stood, a complete non-conductor interposed between 
them, except the United States, who received the blows 
of both ! 

But, though that war was for a long time little else but a 
suspension of arms, from the inability of each to attack on 
the other's element — was it nominal — was it war like a 
peace, or even peace like a war, as was said of Amiens ? 
Oh, no — old England had nailed the colors to the mast ; she 
had determined to go down rather than give up the ship ; she 
wisely saw no safety for her in what might be called a peace ; 
and it was a glorious determination ; and it is that spirit — it 
is not thews, muscle — it is not brawn, it is that spirit which 
gives life to every nation — that spirit which carries a man, 
however feeble, through conflicts with giants, compared to 
him in point of strength, honorably, triumphantly. Sir, I 
consider the late conflict between England and France — 
England against the congregated continent of Europe — to 
say nothing of any other make-weights in the scale — confi- 
dent against a world in arms — as far surpassing in sublimity 
of example, the tenaciousness of purpose of Rome during the 
second Punic war, as that surpassed any of our famous Indian 
wars and expeditions. It is a lesson of the constancy of the 
human mind, which ought never to be thrown away. 



XXL— THE DIFFICULT STEP. 

JOHN RANDOLPH. 



Sir, I never could speak or quarrel by the book — by the 
card, as Touchstone tells us, was the fashion in his day. I 
have no gift at this special pleading — at the retort courteous 
tind the countercheck quarrelsome, till things get to the 
point, where nothing is left for it but to back out or fight. 
We are asked, sir, by this new executive government of 
ours — not in the very words, but it is a great deal like it — ■ 
of the son of Climene — to give some token, some proof, that 
they possess legitimate claims to the confidence of the people — 



DEATH OF J. Q. ADAMS. 37 

which they have modestly confessed they do not possess in 
the same degree as their predecessors. I will answer them 
in the words of the father of that son, " You ask definite 
pledges — I give definite pledges tremblingly." But, sir, the 
phaeton is at the door, ambition burns to mount. Whether 
the Mississippi, like the Po, is to sutler a metamorphosis, not 
in its poplars — whether the blacks shall be turned into whites, 
or the whites into blacks, the slaves into masters, or the mas- 
ters into slaves, or the murdered and their murderers to 
change color, like the mulberry-trees, belongs to men of 
greater sagacity than I am, to foretell. I am content to act 
the part of Cassandra, to lift up my voice, whether it be 
heeded, or heard only to be disregarded, until too late — I will 
cry out obsta principiis. Yes, sir, in this case, as in many 
ethers — the first step is all the difficulty — that taken, then 
they may take for their motto — " there is no retreat." I tell 
these gentlemen there is no retreat — it is cut off — there is no 
retreat, even as tedious and painful as that conducted by 
Xenophon. There is no Anabasis for us — and if there was, 
where is our Xenophon ? I do not feel lightly on this occa- 
sion — far otherwise — but the heaviest heart often vents itself 
in light expressions. There is a mirth of sadness, as well as 
tears of joy. If I could talk lightly on this sad subject, 
I would remind gentlemen of the reply given by a wiseacre, 
who w r as sent to search the vaults of the Parliament House 
at the time of the gunpowder plot, and who had searched 
and reported that they had found fifty barrels of powder con- 
cealed under the fagots and other fuel — that he had removed 
twenty-five, and hoped that the other twenty-five would do 
no harm. The step you are about to take is the match of 
that powder — whether it be twenty-five or fifty barrels is 
quite immaterial — it is enough to blow — not the first of the 
Stuarts — but the last of another dynasty — sky-high — sky- 
high. 



XXII— DEATH OF J. Q. ADAMS. 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

The Thirtieth Congress assembles in this conjuncture, anil 
the debates are solemn, earnest and bewildering. Steam 
and lightning, which have become docile messengers, make 



38 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

the American people listeners to this high debate, and anxiety 
and interest, intense and universal, absorb them all. Sud- 
denly the council is dissolved. Silence is in the capitol, and 
sorrow has thrown its pall over the land. What new event 
is this ? Has some Cromwell closed the legislative chambers ? 
or has some Caesar, returning from his distant conquests, 
passed the Rubicon, seized the purple, and fallen in the 
Senate beneath the swords of self-appointed executioners of 
his country's vengeance ? No ! Nothing of all this. What 
means, then, this abrupt and fearful silence ? What un- 
looked-for calamity has quelled the debates of the Senate, and 
calmed the excitement of the people ? An old «ian. whose 
tongue once indeed was eloquent, but now through age had 
well nigh lost its cunning, has fallen into the swoon of death. 
He was not an actor in the drama of conquest — nor had his 
feeble voice yet mingled in the lofty argument — 

" A gray haired sire, whose eye intent 
Was on the visioned future bent." 

— In the very act of rising to debate he fell into the arms 
of conscript fathers of the republic. A long lethargy super- 
vened and oppressed his senses. Nature rallied the wasting 
powers, on the verge of the grave, for a very brief space. 
But it was long enough for him. The re-kindled eye showed 
that the re-collected mind was clear, calm and vigorous. 
His weeping family, and his sorrowing compeers were there. 
He surveyed the scene, and knew at once its fatal import. 
He had left no duty unperformed ; he had no wish unsatis- 
fied ; no ambition unattained ; no regret, no sorrow, no fear, 
no remorse. He could not shake off the dews of death that 
gathered on his brow. He could not pierce the thick shades 
that rose up before him. But he knew that eternity lay 
close by the shores of time. He knew that his Redeemer 
lived. Eloquence, even in that hour, inspired him with his 
ancient sublimity of utterance. " This," said the dying 
man, " this is the end of eakth." He paused for a mo- 
ment, and then added, " I am content. 5 ' Angels might well 
draw aside the curtains of the skies to look down on such a 
scene — a scene that approximated even to that scene of un- 
approachable sublimity, not to be recalled without reverence, 
when in mortal agony, one who spake as never man spake, 
said, " It is finished " 



DEATH OF NAPOLEON. 39 

XXITL— DEATH OF NAPOLEON". 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

He was an emperor. But he saw around him a mother 
brothers and sisters, not ennobled ; whose humble state re- 
minded him and the world, that he was born a plebeian ; and 
he had no heir to wait for the imperial crown. He scourged 
the earth again, and again fortune smiled on him even in his 
wild extravagance. He bestowed kingdoms and principali- 
ties upon his kindred — put away the devoted wife of his 
youthful days, and another, a daughter of Hapsburgh's impe- 
rial house, joyfully accepted his proud alliance Offspring 
gladdened his anxious sight ; a diadem was placed on its 
infant brow, and it received the homage of princes, even in 
its cradle. Now he was indeed a monarch — a legitimate 
monarch— a monarch by divine appointment — the first of an 
endless succession of monarchs. But there were other mon- 
archs who held sway in the earth. He was not content, he 
would reign with his kindred alone. He gathered new and 
greater armies, from his own land — from subjugated lands. 
He called forth the young and brave — one from every house- 
hold — from the Pyrenees to the Zuyder-Zee — from Jura to 
the ocean. He marshalled them into long and majestic 
columns, and w r ent forth to seize that universal dominion, 
which seemed almost within his grasp. But ambition had 
tempted fortune too far. The nations of the earth resisted, 
repelled, pursued, surrounded him. The pageant was ended. 
The crown fell from his presumptuous head. The wife who 
had wedded him in his pride forsook him when the hour of 
fear came upon him. His child was ravished from his sight. 
His kinsmen were degraded to their first estate, and he was 
no longer emperor, nor consul, nor general, nor even a citizen, 
but an exile and a prisoner, on a lonely island, in the midst 
of the wild Atlantic. Discontent attended him here. The 
wayward man fretted out a few 7 long years of his yet unbroken 
manhood, looking off at the earliest daw 7 n and in evening's 
latest twilight, toward that distant w r orld that had only just 
eluded his grasp. His heart corroded. Death came, not un- 
locked for, though it came even then unwelcome. He was 
stretched on his bed within the fort wdiich constituted his 
prison. A few fast and faithful friends stood around, with the 
guards who rejoiced that the hour of relief from long and 



40 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

wearisome watching, was at hand. As his strength wasted 
away, delirium stirred up the brain from its long and inglori- 
ous inactivity. The pageant of ambition returned. He was 
again a lieutenant, a general, a consul, an emperor of France. 
He filled again the throne of Charlemagne. His kindred 
pressed around him, again invested with the pompous pa- 
geantry of royalty. The daughter of the long line of kings 
again stood proudly by his side, and the sunny face of his 
ehild shone out from beneath the diadem that encircled its 
flowing locks. The marshals of Europe awaited his com- 
mand. The legions of the old guard were in the field, their 
scarred faces rejuvenated, and their ranks, thinned in many 
battles, replenished. Russia, Prussia, Denmark and England, 
gathered their mighty hosts to give him battle. Once more 
he mounted his impatient charger, and rushed forth to con- 
quest. He waved his sword aloft and cried " Tete d'armee." 
The feverish vision broke — the mockery was ended. The 
silver cord was loosened, and the warrior fell back upon his 
bed a lifeless corpse. This was the end of earth. The 

CoRSICAN WAS NOT CONTENT. 



XXIV.— WHO IS BLANNERHASSETT? 

WILLIAM WIRT. 

Who is Blannerhassett ? A native of Ireland, a man of 
letters, who fled from the storms of his own country to find 
quiet in ours. His history shows that war is not the natural 
element of his mind. If it had been, he never would have 
exchanged Ireland for America. So far is an army from 
furnishing the society natural and proper to Mr. Blannerhas- 
sett's character, that on his arrival in America, he retired 
even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought 
quiet and solitude in the bosom of our western forests. But 
he carried with him taste, and science, and wealth ; and lo, 
the desert smiled ! Possessing himself of a beautiful island 
in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with 
every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery that 
Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, 
that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs, is his. 
An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A 



WHO IS BLANNERHASSETT? 41 

philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secret mysteries 
of nature. Peace, tranquillity, arid innocence shed their 
mingled delights around him. And to crown the enchant- 
ment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even be- 
yond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that 
can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love and 
made him the father of several children. The evidence 
would convince you that this is but a faint picture of tho 
real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocent sim- 
plicity, and this tranquillity, this feast of mind, this pure ban- 
quet of the heart, the destroyer comes; he comes to change 
this paradise into a hell. Yet the flowers do not wither at 
his approach. No monitory shuddering through the bosom 
of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is 
corning upon him. A stranger presents himself. Introduced 
to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held 
in his country, he soon finds his way into their hearts by the 
dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty 
of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power 
of his address. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence 
is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no design itself, 
it suspects none in others. It wears no guard before its 
breast. Every door and portal and every avenue of the 
heart is open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the 
state of Eden when the serpent entered its bowers. The 
prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the 
open and unpractised heart of the unfortunate Blannerhas 
sett, found but little difficulty in changing the native char- 
acter of that heart and the object of its affections. By de- 
grees he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He 
breathes into it the fire of his own courage ; a daring and 
desperate thirst for glory ; an ardor panting for great enter- 
prises, for all the storm and bustle and hurricane of life. In 
a short time the whole man is changed, and every object of 
his former delight is relinquished. No more he enjoys the 
tranquil scene ; it has become flat and insipid to his taste. 
His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown 
aside. His shrubbery blooms and breathes its fragrance upon 
the air in vain ; he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks thk 
rich melody of music ; it longs for the trumpet's clangor and 
the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so 
sweet, no longer affects him ; and the angel smile of his 
wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with an ecstacy so 



42 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

unspeakable, is now unseen and unfelt. Greater objects 
have taken possession of his soul. His imagination has been 
dazzled by visions of diadems, of stars and garters, and titles 
of nobility. Ke has been taught to burn with restless emu- 
lation at the names of great heroes and conquerors. His en- 
chanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness ; 
and in a few months we find the peaceful and tender partner 
of his bosom, whom he lately " permitted not the winds of" 
summer "to visit too roughly," we find her shivering at mid- 
night on the winter banks of the Ohio and mingling her tears 
with the torrents that froze as they fell. Yet this unfortu- 
nate man, thus deluded from his interest and bis happiness, 
thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace, thus 
confounded in the toils that were deliberately spread for him, 
and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of an- 
other — this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play 
a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, 
this man is to be called the principal offender, while he by 
whom he was thus plunged in misery is comparatively inno- 
cent, a mere accessory ! Is this reason ? Is it law ? Is it 
humanity ? Sir, neither the human understanding will bear 
a perversion so monstrous and absurd ! so shocking to the 
soul ! so revolting to reason ! Let Aaron Burr, then, not 
shrink from the high destination which he has courted, and 
having already ruined Blannerhassett in fortune, character, 
and happiness forever, let him not attempt to finish the 
tragedy by thrusting that ill-fated man between himself and 
punishment. 



XXV.— DOOM OF THE INDIANS. 

JOSEPH STORY. 

There is, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to 
awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of 
our judgment ; much which may be urged to excuse their 
own atrocities ; much in their characters, which betrays us 
into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melan- 
choly than their history ? By a law of their nature, they 
seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Everywhere, 
at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear 



DOOM OF THE INDIANS. 43 

the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves 
of autumn, and they are gone forever. They pass mournfully 
by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago, the 
smoke of -their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose 
in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, 
from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts 
of victory and the war dance rang through the mountains and 
the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk 
whistled through the forests ; and the hunter's trace and dark 
encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The war- 
riors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the 
songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, 
and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The 
aged sat down ; but they wept not. They should soon be at 
rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a home 
prepared lor the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver 
men never lived ; truer men never drew the bow. They had 
courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, be- 
yond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, 
and they feared no hardships. If they had the vices of savage 
life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their coun- 
try, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not inju- 
ry, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was 
terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. 
Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the 
grave. 

But where are they ? Where are the villagers, and war- 
riors, and youth ; the Sachems and their tribes ; the hunters 
and their families ? They have perished. They are con- 
sumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty 
work. No, — nor famine, nor war. There has been a mighty 
power, a moral canker, which has eaten into their heart- 
cores — a plague, which the touch of the white man com- 
municated — a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering 
ruin. The winds of the-Atlautic fan not a single region, 
which they may now call their own. Already the last 
fesble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey 
beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable 
homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, 
" few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on 
their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their 
lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. 
The white man is upon their heels, for terror, or despatch ; 



44 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

but the)' heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their 
deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves 
of their fathers. They shed no tears ; they utter no cries ; 
they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts 
which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of 
vengeance or submission ; but of hard necessity, which stifles 
both ; which chokes all utterance ; which has no aim or 
method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but 
for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the 
fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them, — no, never. 
Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. 
They know and feel that there is for them still one remove 
further, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burial- 
ground of their race. 



XXVI— VIRGINIA. 

H. EEDIXGER. 

I know that it is customary with those who lack the taste 
to select or the ability to handle a more becoming theme, to 
discharge their tiny artillery at Southern character and Sou- 
thern institutions ; and especially does Virginia come in for a 
full share of the pointless arrows of these gentlemen, whose 
efforts constantly remind me of those very ambitious persons 
whose names are to be seen, inscribed by their own hands, on 
every edifice or monument of art, and who hope, by thus dis- 
figuring or defiling it, they may render their own paltry me- 
moirs as lasting as the building itself. 

Now, whether Virginia has deteriorated or not, whether her 
palmiest days have passed by, and her energies are in the 
" sere and yellow leaf;" whether her present sous are dwarfs, 
in comparison with her elder born ; whether the sceptre of 
intellect has departed from her, and in the race of glory and 
of greatness she is no longer first ; whether the plucking of 
Northern cupidity has drained her of her wealth, or her own 
unbounded and unwise liberality exhausted her resources, I 
will not at present attempt to determine ; but this I will 
boldly assert, and that without the fear of contradiction, that 
in her regard for law and order — in her love of justice, and 
her strict obedience to all its dictates — in the careful observ- 



MASSACHUSETTS. 45 

ance of the rights and privileges of all, manifested by her 
citizens, in piety, morality, and sobriety — and in her sacred 
observance of the plighted word of her government, the mo- 
ther of States need fear no comparison with any oi her prog- 
eny, or with any of her sisters. 

Massachusetts is a great State, Sir, — a very great State, in- 
deed, is Massachusetts. She could not well be anything else, 
sir, for she has Boston, and Bunker Hill, and the Hock of 
Plymouth ! There the Mayflower landed the Pilgrims ; and 
there witches and Indians and Quakers and Catholics, and 
other such heretics, were in the brave days of old, burned, 
literally, by the cord ! She is unquestionably, sir, a great 
State, and some of her Representatives on this floor seem to 
know it ; and in the plenitude of their merciful hearts, they 
pour out a deal of compassion and surplus pity upon poor old 
Virginia ! They not unfrequently raise their sanctified eyes 
to Heaven, and thank the Lord they are not like that poor 
publican ! 



XXVIL— MASS ACHUSETTS. 

J. G. PALFREY. 



When the gentleman, calling up affecting reminiscences 
of the past, appealed to us of Massachusetts to be faithful to 
the obligations of patriotism, I repeat, that I trust his lan- 
guage fell profitably as well as pleasantly on my ear. He has 
reminded us of our stern but constant ancestry. I hope we 
shall be true to their great mission of Freedom and Right, and 
all the more true for having listened to his own impressive 
exhortation. The gentleman remembers the declaration of 
Hume, that " it was to the Puritans that the people of Eng- 
land owed its liberties." May their race never desert that 
work, as long as any of it is left to do ! Sir, as I come of a 
morning to my duties here, I am apt to stop before the picture 
in your Rotundo, of the departure from Delft Haven of that 
vessel, " freighted with the best hopes of the world," and re- 
fresh myself by looking in the faces of four ancestors of my 
own, depicted by the limner in the group on that dismal 
deck — the brave and prudent leader of the company, his head 
and knee bowed in prayer ; — his faithful partner, blending in 



46 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

her mild but care-worn countenance the expression of the 
wife, the parent, the exile, and the saint ; — the young maiden 
and the youth, going out to the wide sea and the wide world, 
but already trained to masculine endurance and " perfect 
peace" by the precious faith of Christ. Not more steadfast 
than those forlorn wanderers were the men, who in the tapes- 
tried chambers of England's great sway, with stout sword 
on thigh, and a stouter faith in the heart, and the ragged 
flags of Cressy, and Agincourt, and the Armada above their 
heads, 

— " Sat. with Bibles open, around the council board, 
And answered a king's missive, with a stern 
' Thus sairh the Lord.' " 

Sir, the spirit of that stubborn race, if somewhat softened 
by the change in manners and the lapse of time, is not yet 
extinct in their children. The gentleman is welcome, for 
me, to have very little respect for any who, in his language, 
have " made capital" of one kind or another out of human 
slavery. But I ask him, did the Roundhead ever flinch 
when battle was to be done for freedom ? Sir, I live in the 
midst of his last bloody struggles for that cause. Humble as 
I am. I am honored to represent the men who till the 
earliest battle fields of American Independence. As I sit in my 
door of a still summer evening, I hear the bells from Lexinsr- 
ton Common. The shaft over the sacred ashes of Bunker 
Hill rises within three miles of my windows ; I leave my 
home, and in an hour I stand by the ruined abutments of 
old Concord Bridge, and the green graves of the first two 
British victims in the hecatombs of the Revolution. Repre- 
senting, however feebly, such a people in lineage and in office 
— warned by the lessons and the purest monuments of such a 
history — is it for me to think of helping to extend the foul 
3ause of slavery over another foot of God's fair earth ? No, 
' here I stand, I can do no otherwise ; may God help me." 
I boast no courage ; I fear I might turn out to be no better 
than a fearful man ; but I do trust that every drop of thin 
blood in these old veins of mine, would be freely given to stain 
the scaffold, or boil and bubble at the stake, before, by any 
act of my doing, the slavery of my brother man should take 
another forward step on free American soil. 



THE CONSTITUTION. 47 

XXVIIL— THE CONSTITUTION. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

We can give up everything hnt our Constitution, which is 
the sun of our system. As the natural sun dispels fogs, heats 
the air, and vivifies and illumines the world, even so does 
the Constitution, in days of adversity and gloom, come out 
for our rescue and our enlightening. If the luminary which 
now sheds its light upon us, and invigorates our sphere, 
should sink forever in his ocean hed, clouds, cold, and perpet- 
ual death would environ us : and if we suffer our other sun, 
the Constitution, to be turned from us; if we neglect ordisre- 
gard its benefits ; if its beams disappear but once in the 
West, anarchy and chaos will have come again, and we 
shall grope out in darkness and despair the remainder of a 
miserable existence. I confess that, when I think of the 
Constitution, I feel a burning zeal which prompts me to pour 
out my whole heart. What is the Constitution ? It is the 
bond which binds together millions of brothers. What is its 
history ? who made it ? Monarchs, crowned heads, lords, or 
emperors ? No, it was none of these. The Constitution of 
the United States, the nearest approach of mortal to perfect 
political wisdom, was the work of men who purchased liberty 
with their blood, but who found that, without organization, 
freedom was not a blessing. They formed it, and the people, 
in their intelligence, adopted it. And what has been its his- 
tory ? Has it trodden down any man's rights ? Has it cir- 
cumscribed the liberty of the press ? Has it stopped the 
mouth of any man ? Has it held us up as objects of disgrace 
abroad ? How much the reverse ! It has given us charac- 
ter abroad ; and when, with Washington at its head, it went 
forth to the world, this young country at once became the 
most interesting and imposing in the circle of civilized nations. 
How is the Constitution of the United States regarded abroad ? 
Why, as the last hope of liberty among men ! WherevrT 
you go, you find the United States held up as an example by 
the advocates of freedom. The mariner no more looks to his 
compass or takes his departure by the sun, than does the 
lover of liberty abroad shape his course by reference to the 
Constitution of the United States. 



48 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XXIX.— THE PEACE CONGRESS. 

ANONYMOUS. 

If we* fail, the disappointment is our own ; the world can 
receive no detriment from our exertions, however unsuccess- 
ful. But if we succeed, — if our efforts for ameliorating the 
lot of humanity are triumphant, — what a fountain of the 
bitterest woes will he dried. ! what rivers of blood will cease 
to deluge and destroy the choicest of human, bliss ! how will 
the heart of philanthropy exult, and what a smile of un- 
mingled delight will kindle over the face of a suffering and 
desponding world ! That a foul stigma, which for so many 
ages has defaced the annals of humanity, should he wiped 
away — that man should cease to follow the fratricidal 
example of the first of sons and of murderers — that he should 
lay aside his cannibal ferocity, which, unlike that of the wild 
beast, is turned against his own race and kindred — that in- 
fancy, and age, and feminine helplessness should forever here- 
after repose in safety — that our flocks should feed on the 
green fields in quiet, and the smoke of our cottages still curl 
on the peaceful breeze — that these sights should hereafter 
present themselves, instead of the butcheries, the havoc, and 
the conflagration of war, is an object well worthy the most 
devout and unwearied efforts of every friend of human honor 
and human happiness. Great God ! is such an expectation 
a chimera, the creature of a duped and sickly imagination ? 
Are the efforts which aim thus at the exaltation and blessed- 
ness of the human race, inspired alone by folly ? Is any sad 
and inevitable fatality thus brooding over the fate of mortals ? 
Must reason guide, and success forever crown schemes of 
human wretchedness and human destruction ; while disap- 
pointment is forever to be the bitter cup of those who thus 
signally endeavor to render the world better and happier ? 
We are unwilling to believe it ; we will not, at least, despair 
without an effort 



LITERATURE PERVERTED. 49 

XXX.— LITERATURE PERVERTED. 

ANONYMOUS. 

Literature has been a most powerful agent in feeding the 
warlike propensity, and this is undergoing a vital and happy 
change. Tn former days it was altogether calculated to 
arouse and foster a martial feeling. The poems, the histories, 
the orations, which for centuries have delighted mankind, 
have been replete with the praises of heroes and conquerors. 
These pictures and descriptions' have been seized upon, 
amplified and issued at second hand, or assumed as a species 
of model for every imitator, from that day to this. A magi- 
cal illusion has been attempted, and in a great degree effected. 
The battle-field, with its promiscuous carnage of men and 
horses, covered with clotted gore, and the frozen fragments 
of bodies, — which else had now been warm with youth, and 
health, and happiness, blessing and being blessed, — is repre- 
sented as the field of glory. The devastation of fruitful 
fields, the destruction of happy homes, the cleaving down of 
the liberties of a free, and prosperous, and happy people, ap- 
pear under the guise of a splendid conquest. The tears and 
execrations of a nation of widows and orphans, and childless 
parents — the smothered groans of an enslaved people— these 
sound the trump of everlasting fame for the author of such 
accumulated miseries ; more loud and more lovely, in propor- 
tion as they are mingled more deeply with the tones of 
despair ! And men have listened, and admired, and have 
been made the dupes of their imaginations. 

But the scales of delusion are falling from the eyes of 
nations, and the literature of the age is turned, and is flowing 
with the general current. At the present day, he is more 
applauded who crowns a country with peace and plenty, 
than he who covers it with bones and putrefaction — he who 
builds, than he who burns, a city — he who has founded a 
wise system of laws, than he who has overturned it — he, in 
short, whose fame is associated with the happiness of his 
race, than he who has wantonly hurled the firebrand of 
destruction into the home of that happiness, though the smoke 
and glare of its conflagration should reach the heavens, and 
the crash of its ruins shake the earth to its centre. Wheii 
*ve reflect upon the influence exerted by a ballad, or a tale, 
shall we hesitate to hope the most blessed results from this 
change in the literature of the present age ? 



50 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XXXI.— CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

I know it is said that it is impossible to civilize Africa. 
Why ? Why is it impossible to civilize men in one part of 
the earth more than in another ? Consult history. Was 
Italy, was Greece, the cradle of civilization ? No. As far 
back as the lights of tradition reach, Africa was the cradle of 
science, while Syria, and Greece, and Italy were yet covered 
with darkness. As far back as we can trace the first rudi- 
ments of improvement, they come from the very head waters 
of the Nile, far in the interior of Africa ; and there are yet 
to be found, in shapeless ruins, the monuments of this prime- 
val civilization. To come down to a much later period, 
while the West and South of Europe were yet barbarous, the 
Mediterranean coast of Africa was filled with cities, acad- 
emies, museums, churches, and a highly cultivated popula- 
tion. What has raised the Gaul, the Belgium, the Germany, 
the Scandinavia, the Britain of ancient geography to their 
present improved and improving condition ? Africa is not 
now sunk lower than most of those countries were eighteen 
centuries ago ; and the engines of social influence are increas- 
ed a thousand-fold in numbers and efficacy. It is not 
eighteen hundred years since Scotland, whose metropolis has 
been called the Athens of modern Europe, the country of 
Hume, of Smith, of Robertson, of Blair, of Stewart, of Brown, 
of Jeffrey, of Chalmers, of Scott, of Brougham, was a wilder- 
ness, infested by painted savages. It is not a thousand years 
since the north of Germany, now filled with beautiful cities, 
learned universities, and the best educated population in the 
world, was a dreary, pathless forest. Am I told that 
the work we have in hand is too great to be done ? Too 
great, I ask, to be done when ? too great to be done by 
'whom ? Too great, I admit, to be done at once ; too great 
to be done by this society ; too great to be done by this gene- 
ration, perhaps ; but not too great to be done. Nothing is 
too great to be done, which is founded on truth and justice, 
and which is pursued with the meek and gentle spirit of 
Christian love. 



PUBLIC DISHONESTY. 51 

XXXII— PUBLIC DISHONESTY. 

HENRY W. BEECHER. 

A corrupt public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public 
sentiment in which dishonesty is not disgraceful ; in which 
bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted, 
is a curse to the young. The lever of speculation, the univer- 
sal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals, is ; 
to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. 

If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious 
dishonesties is not aroused ; if good men do not bestir them- 
selves to drag the young from this foul sorcery : if the relaxed 
bands of honesty are not tightened, and conscience tutored 
to a severer morality, our night is at hand, — our midnight 
.ot far off. "Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon 
broken laws, and wealth saved by injustice ! Woe to a gen- 
eration fed by the bread of fraud, whose children's inheritance 
shall be a perpetual memento of their father's unrighteous- 
ness ; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by associa- 
tion with the revered memories of father, brother, and friend ! 

But when a whole people, united by a common disregard 
of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors ; and States vie 
with States in an infamous repudiation of just debts, by open 
or sinister methods ; and nations exert their sovereignty to 
protect and dignify the knavery of the Commonwealth ; then 
the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend, before 
whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the 
sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are 
stamped down and ground into the dirt. Xeed we ask the 
cause of growing dishonesty anions the young, the in- 
creasing untrustworthinoss of all agents, when States are seen 
clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on 
fraud for their garments ? 

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, 
occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at length 
ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common accidents 
cf fire and flood. The budget of each week is incomplete 
without its mob and run-away cashier -its duel and de- 
faulter ; and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in 
those which follow on, so the villanies of each week obliterate 
the record of the last. 

Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, 
whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are uow r erful 



52 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, 
except those which required courage ; into whose head I do 
not think a pure thought has entered for forty years ; in 
whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very lone- 
liness ; — in evil he was ripe and rotten ; hoary and deprav- 
ed in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past ; evil 
when by himself, and viler among men ; corrupting to the 
young ; — to domestic fidelity, a recreant ; to common honor, a 
traitor ; to honesty, an outlaw'; to religion, a hypocrite ; — base 
in all that is worthy of man, and accomplished in whatever 
is disgraceful ; and yet this wretch could go where he would ; 
enter good men's dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men 
would curse him, yet obey him ; hate him, and assist him ; 
warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for 
him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious 
knaves, cannot breed honest men. 

We have not yet emerged from a period in which debts 
were insecure ; the debtor legally protected against the rights 
of the creditor ; taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, 
but for political effect ; and lowered to a dishonest ineffi- 
ciency ; and when thus diminished, not collected; the citi- 
zens resisting their own officers ; officers resigning at the 
bidding of the electors ; the laws of property paralyzed ; 
bankrupt laws built up ; and stay-laws unconstitutionally 
enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear 
to deny them, lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll 
back disdainfully upon the bench, to despoil its dignity, and 
prostrate its power. General suffering has made us tolerant 
of general dishonesty ; and the gloom of our commercial dis- 
aster threatens to become the pall of our morals. 



XXXIIL— WORLD-WIDE FAME OF WASHINGTON! 

ASHER ROBBINS. 

It is the peculiar good fortune of this country to have given 
birth to a citizen, whose name everywhere produces a senti- 
ment of regard for his country itself. In other countries when- 
ever and wherever this is spoken of to be praised, and with the 
highest praise, it is called the country of Washington. I be- 
lieve there is no people, civilized or savage, in any place, 
however remote, where the name of Washington has not been 



WITHDRAWAL OF THE ARMY FROM MEXICO. 53 

heard, and where it is not respected with the fondest admira- 
tion. We are told that the Arab of the desert talks of 
Washington in his tent, and that his name is familiar to the 
wandering Scythian. He seems, indeed, to be the delight of 
humankind, as their beau ideal of human nature. Xo Amer- 
ican, in any part of the world, but has found the regard for 
himself increased by his connection with Washington, as his 
fellow-countryman ; and who has not felt a pride, and had 
occasion to exult, in the fortunate connection ? 

Half a century and more has now passed away since he 
came upon the stage, and his fame first broke upon the 
world ; for it broke like the blaze of day from the rising sun — 
almost as sudden, and seemingly as universal. The eventful 
period since that era, has teemed with great men, who have 
crossed the scene and passed off. Some of them have arrested 
ereat attention — very great. Still Washington retains his 
preeminent place in the minds of men — still his peerless 
name is cherished by them in the same freshness of delight 
as in the morn of its glory. History will keep her record of 
his fame ; but h story is not necessary to perpetuate it. In 
regions where history is not read, where letters are unknown, 
it lives, and will go down from age to age. in all future time, 
in their traditionary lore. Who would exchange this fame, 
the common inheritance of our country, for the fame of any 
individual, which any country of any time can boast ? — I 
would not ; with my sentiments, I could not. 



XXXIV.— OX THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE ARMY FROM 

MEXICO. 

EDWARD A. HANITKGAN. 

We are engaged in war with an obstinate enemy, and 
during its continuance I feel bound by the highest sense of 
duty to contribute, by every means in my power, to the sue- 
cess of my country's arms, and the humiliation and over- 
throw of the enemy. I stop not to ask the approval of cas- 
uists when my heart bids me to know only my own country 
in the contest ; and I fervently trust that God may forever 
■jrown her eagle banner with victory, whenever and wherever 
qer sons may unfurl it in battle, beneath the broad vault of 



54 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Heaven. Never may its glorious folds, dimmed and discolored 
with the blood of its soldiers, trail in the dust. I should de- 
plore an unjust or an aggressive war as much as any man ; I 
would leave no proper means untried for an accommodation ; 
to secure peace I would yield everything but honor ; but 
while war lasted I would strain every sinew, exert every 
nerve of the nation to impress the enemy and the world with 
the terror of our arms. Sir, the hunters-upof conscience cases 
may approve it or not : I am well assured that this course it 
is my duty to adopt and pursue. I would not, while the 
gloomy cloud of war hangs over the land, say to the enemy, 
" Go on ! you are right — we are wrong ! The God of justice 
is on your side, and His avenging hand will yet deliver to 
your toils our soldiers bound hand and foot, so that you may 
flesh your swords in their bosoms 1" Sir. I would not say to 
our own brave soldiers, " March slowly — trail your arms — 
you "are engaged in an unjust and unholy war!" No. I 
would not paralyze their strong arms and valiant hearts in 
the hour of battle ! I would not rob them of the hope of 
Heaven ! I would not shriek into the ear of the dying soldier 
that for him no bright-eyed angels waited above the smoke 
of the battle — that he must never hope lor Paradise ! No ! 
but I would say to our soldiers, " Advance your standard ! 
Wave it high in air ! Let its flashing folds make music ; 
when the battle is over, let the blaze of victory surround it, 
or let your lifeless bodies be piled in pyramids on the gory 
field ! Onward in this spirit, or dream no more of the proud 
wife's kiss, or the mother's blessing and her prayer !" For, I 
must confess, I do not comprehend the forecast which pro- 
poses the withdrawal of our armies, or the prudence which 
declares in advance that we must attach no Mexican territory 
to the Union. 



XXXV.— RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 

THOMAS CORWIN. 

Sir, I have heard much and read somewhat of this gentle- 
man Terminus. Alexander of whom I have spoken was a 
devotee of this divinity We have seen the end of him and 
his empire. It was said to b* an attribute of this god, that 



RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 55 

he must always advance, and never recede. So both 
Republican and Imperial Rome believed. It was, as they 
said, their destiny : and for a while it did seem to be even so. 
Roman Terminus did advance. Under the eagles of Rome 
he was carried from his home on the Tiber to the furthest 
East, on the one hand, and the far West, amongst the then 
barbarous tribes of western Europe, on the other. But at 
length the time came when retributive justice had become 
" a destiny." The despised Gaul calls out to the contemned 
Goths, and Attila, with his Huns, answers back the battle- 
shout to both. The " blue-eyed nations of the North," in 
succession, are united, pour their countless husts of warriors 
upon Rome and Rome's always-advancing god, Terminus. 
And now the battle-axe of the barbarian strikes down the 
conquering eagle of Rome. Terminus at last recedes, slowly 
at first, but finally he is driven to Rome, and from Rome to 
Byzantium. Whoever would know the further fate of this 
Roman deity, may find ample gratification of his curiosity in 
the luminous pages of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." Such 
will find that Rome thought as you now think, that it was 
her destiny to conquer provinces and nations, and, no doubt, 
she sometimes said as you say, " I will conquer a peace." 
And where is she now, the Mistress of the World ? The 
spider weaves his web in her palaces, the owl sings his watch- 
soirg-in her towers. Teutonic power now lords it over the 
servile remnant, the miserable memento of old and once 
omnipotent Rome. Sad, very sad, are the lessons which 
time has written for us. Through and in them all I see 
nothing but the inflexible execution of that old law, which 
ordains as eternal, that cardinal rule, " Thou shalt not covet 
thy neighbor's goods, nor anything which is his." Since I 
have lately heard so much about the dismemberment of 
Mexico, I have looked back to see how, in the course of events 
which some call " Providence," it has fared with other nations 
who engaged in this work of dismemberment. I see that iti 
the latter half of the eighteenth century, three powerful 
nations — Russia, Austria, and Prussia — united in the dismem- 
berment of Poland. They said, too, as you say, " It is our 
destiny." They " wanted room." Doubtless each of them 
thought, with his share of Poland, his power was too strong 
ever to fear invasion or even insult. One had his California, 
another his New Mexico, and a third his Vera Cruz. Did 
they remain untouched and incapable of harm ? Alas ! no ; 



56 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

far, very far from it. Retributive justice must fulfil its 
destiny too. A very few years pass off, and we hear of a 
new man, a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named " armed 
soldier of democracy" — Napoleon. He ravages Austria, 
covers her land with blood, drives the Northern Caesar from 
his capital, and sleeps in his palace. Austria may now re- 
member how her power trampled upon Poland. Did she not 
pay dear, very dear for her California ? 

But has Prussia no atonement to make ? You see this 
same Napoleon, the blind instrument of Providence, at work 
there. The thunders of his cannon at Jena proclaim the 
work of retribution for Poland's wrongs ; and the successors of 
the great Frederick, the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying 
across the sandy plain that surrounds their capital, right glad 
if they may escape captivity or death. But how fares it with 
the Autocrat of Russia ? Is he secure in his share of the 
spoils of Poland ? No. Suddenly we see, sir, six hundred 
thousand armed men marching to Moscow. Does his Yera 
Cruz protect him now ? Far from it. Blood, slaughter, 
devastation spread abroad over the land, and finally, the 
conflagration of the old commercial metropolis of Russia 
closes the retribution ; she must pay for her share in the dis- 
memberment of her weak and impotent neighbor. A mind 
more prone to look for the judgments of Heaven, in the doings 
of men, than mine, cannot fail in this to see the providence 
of God. When Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth 
was lighted up that the nations might behold the scene. As 
that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved, and rolled up- 
wards, and yet higher, till its flames licked the stars, and 
fired the whole heavens, it did seem as though the God of 
the nations was writing, in characters of flame, on the front 
of his throne, that doom that shall fall upon the strong nation 
who tramples in scorn upon the weak. And what fortune 
awaits him, the appointed executor of this work, when it was 
all done ? He, too, conceived the notion that his destiny pointed 
onward to universal dominion. France was too small — 
Europe, he thought, should bow down before him. But as 
soon as this idea took possession of his soul, he, too, becomes 
powerless. His Terminus must recede too. Right there, 
while he witnessed the humiliation, and doubtless meditated 
the subjugation of Russia, he who holds the winds in his 
fists, gathered the snows of the North, and blew them upon 
his six hundred thousand men — they fled — they froze — they 



NO NATIONAL GREATNESS WITHOUT MORALITY. 5*7 

perished. And now the mighty Napoleon who had resolved 
on universal dominion, lie too is summoned to answer for the 
violation of that ancient law, " Thou shalt not covet anything 
which is thy neighbor's." And how is the mighty fallen ! 
He, beneath whose proud footstep Europe trembled, he is 
now an exile at Elba, and now, finally, a prisoner on the rock 
of St. Helena, and there, on a barren island, in an unfrequented 
sea, in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the 
death-bed of the mighty conqueror. All his annexations 
have come to that ! His last hour has now come, and he, 
the man of destiny, he who had rocked the world as with 
the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless, still — even as 
the beggar, so he died. On the wings of a tempest, that 
raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power 
that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of 
that wonderful warrior, another witness to the existence of 
that eternal decree, that they who do not rule in righteous- 
ness, shall perish from the earth. He has found "room" at 
last : and France, she too has found " room." Her "eagles" 
now no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the Po, 
and the Borysthenes. They have returned to their old eyry 
between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees; so shall it 
be with yours. You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of 
the Cordilleras, they may wave with insolent triumph in the 
halls of the Montezumas, the armed men of Mexico may quail 
before them, but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in 
prayer to the God of Justice, may call down against you a 
power, in the presence of which, the iron hearts of your war- 
riors shall be turned into ashes. 



XXXVL— NO NATIONAL GREATNESS WITHOUT MORALITY. 

W. E. CHANNING. 

When we look forward to the- probable growth of this 
country ; when we think of the millions of human beings 
who are to spread over our present territory ; of the career 
of improvement and glory open to this new people ; of the 
impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be ex- 
pected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and 
arts ; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be 

3* 



58 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

made, of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve ; 
of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, 
and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues 
have placed us for carrying on their work ; when we think 
of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves 
to bright visions of our country's glory, before which all the 
glories of the past are to fade away ? Is it presumption to 
say, that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt 
through this whole continent, that we shall spread our lan- 
guage, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space 
than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent in- 
fluence ? A nd are we prepared to barter these hopes, this 
sublime moral empire, for conquests by force ? Are we pre- 
pared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content 
ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in oui 
youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with 
sordidness, oppression and shame ? This country cannot 
without peculiar infamy run the common race of national ra- 
pacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, 
and all favor an upright, honorable course. We have not 
the apologies of nations hemmed in by narrow bounds, or 
threatened by the overshadowing power of ambitious neigh- 
bors If we surrender ourselves to a selfish policy, we shall 
sin almost without temptation, and forfeit opportunities of 
greatness vouchsafed to no other people, for a prize below 
contempt. 

I have alluded to the want of wisdom with which we have 
been accustomed to speak of our destiny as a people. We are 
destined (that is the word) to overspread North America ; 
and, intoxicated with the idea, it matters little to us how we 
accomplish our fate. To spread, to supplant others, to cover 
a boundless space, this seenis our ambition, no matter what 
influence we spread with us. Why cannot we rise to noble 
conceptions of our destiny ? Why do we not feel, that our 
w r ork as a nation is, to carry freedom, religion, science, and a 
nobler form of human nature over this continent ? and why 
do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must 
first cherish them in our own borders ; and that whatever 
deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading 
influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world ? I am 
not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that 
we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I. believe, that a 
nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which 



TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS. 59 

govern its policv, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. 

I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A nation, 

renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be 
great. 



XXX VII.— TRUE GRAXDEUR OF XATIOXS. 

CHARLES SU.IXER. 

Casting our eyes over the history of nations, with horror 
we discern the succession of murderous slaughters, by which 
their progress has been marked. Even as the hunter traces 
the wild beast, when pursued to his lair, by the drops of 
blood on the earth, so we follow man, weary, staggering with 
wounds, through the black forest of the past, which he has 
reddened with his gore. 0. let it not be in the future ages, 
as in those which we now contemplate ! Let the grandeur 
of man be discerned, not in bloody victories, or in ravenous 
conquests, but in the blessings which he has secured ; in the 
good he has accomplished ; in the triumphs of benevolence 
and justice ; in the establishment of perpetual peace. 

As the ocean washes every shore, and, with all embracing 
arms, clasps every land, while, on its heaving bosom, it bears 
the products of various climes ; so peace surrounds, protects, 
and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is 
vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, justice is arrested, 
happiness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies. 

And peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison 
with which Marathon aud Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, 
fields held sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose 
their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly heavenly 
stature, — not when we follow him o^er the ice of the Dela- 
ware to the capture of Trenton, — not when we behold him 
victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown, — but when we re- 
gard him in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly 
crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and, at a later 
day, upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while 
he received unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly cry- 
ing for war 



(30 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE 

XXX VIII.— VICISSITUDES OF 1849. 

HORACE GREELEY. 

This fatal year, '49 — will it never have done with its 
desolations ? Pestilence has stalked, and still stalks, with 
desolating tread over the broad earth, defacing its green sod 
to make room for innumerable graves — graves not alone of 
the weak and the wretched, but also of the mighty, the glo- 
rious, the gentle, the lovely, the widely and keemy deplored. 
And that darker scourge, despotism, the dominion of brute 
force and blind selfishness — the lordship of the few for their 
own luxury and aggrandizement over the many whom they 
scorn, and sweat, and starve — when before has a year been 
so fruitful as now, of triumphs to the realm of night ? Sicily 
betrayed and ruined — Lombardy's chains riveted — Sardinia 
crushed — Rome, generous, brave, ill-fated Rome, too ! — she 
lies beneath the feet of her perfidious, perjured foes, and in 
her fall has dragged down the republicans of France, ad- 
judged guilty of the crime of daring to resist the assassination 
of a sister republic. But this is not all, nor half. Germany, 
through her vast extent, has passed over to the camp of 
absolutism — her people still think, but dare not speak, for the 
bayonet is at their throats, and democracy is once more trea- 
son, since its regal enemies have recovered from their terror, 
and found their military tools as brainless and as heartless as 
ever. At last Hungary mounts the funeral pyre of freedom 
and the sacrifice is complete, for Venice must trail her flag 
directly on the tidings of Gorgey's victory. She has stood 
out nobly, for a noble, a priceless cause — so has Hungary 
struggled nobly and nobly fallen. For the present, all is over, 
save that a few desperate, heroic patriots will yet sell their 
lives in fruitless casual conflicts with the minions of despot- 
ism. Nothing now remains but that the wolves should divide 
and devour their prey. 



XXXIX.— ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY. 

DANIEL S. DICKINSON. 

It would be well for these antagonisms who fear that all 
newly acquired territory may be preoccupied and monopolized, 
either by free labor on the one hand, or by slave labor on the 



ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY. 61 

other, as the case may be, unless their favorite ideas are in- 
dulged, to remember that there are other dangers, either real 
or imaginary, to which it may be exposed if left to the free 
government of its own people. Our institutions invite the 
children of every clime to sit down under the wide-spreading" 
branches of the tree of liberty, and we have no prohibitory, 
or even protective impost duties upon social manners and cus- 
toms, political opinions or religious rites. It maybe that the 
rugged Russian, allured by the gentle breezes of Mexico, may 
fail down from his hyperborean regions with his serfdom and 
his military rule, or the Turk choose to regale himself there 
with his pipes and mocha, his Georgian Houris — sensual de- 
lights and Mohammedan divinity ; or, what is equally probable, 
as our Pacific possessions place us in direct communication 
with Asia, that the plains may be desecrated by the trundling 
of the car of Juggernaut, or the subjects of the celestial Em- 
peror — the brother of the sun and moon — may hurry thither, 
and ruin all agricultural interests by converting it into an 
extensive field of hyson. 

But let those who entertain them, dismiss all idle and sel- 
fish fears, regard others as wise, and as virtuous, and as 
capable of their own government as themselves, and all will 
be well. The spirit of freedom will enlarge her own bound- 
aries and people the area, in obedience to laws stronger than 
the laws of Congress. The rich heritage we enjoy was won 
by the common blood and treasure of the North and South, 
the East and the West, and was defended and vindicated by 
the same, in the second war of independence ; and in the 
present war with a reckless and semi-barbarous foe, the brave 
sons of every section of the Union have fought and fallen 
side by side ; the parched sands of Mexico have drunk togeth- 
er the best blood of New York and South Carolina. These 
recollections should renew and strengthen the ties which 
unite the members of the confederacy, and cause them to 
spurn all attempts at provoking sectional jealousies and irri- 
tations, calculated to disturb the harmony and shake the 
stability of the Union. In the language of Mr. Jefferson, they 
who indulge " this treason against human hope will signalize 
their epoch in future history as the counterpart of the model 
oi tneir oredeeessors." 



62 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XL.— ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY 

J. W. MILLER. 

In consulting- the history of nations, it will be found there 
is an epoch in the existence of each, when a temptation 
presents itself, which resisted or yielded to, marks the future 
character of the nation for good or for evil. That temptation 
is now presented to this republic — it is Mexico. It is a broad 
And a rich land — a land of silver and gold — a land without 
a government to protect it, and without a people capable of 
defending it, and it lies before us an easy tempting prey. 
There is none to stay our hand, or to resist the gratification 
of our ambition. The mystery of her origin, the story of her 
former conquest, play upon our fancy and excite our heroic 
passions. Already has the tempter carried us to the pinnacle 
of the temple and points out the rich treasures of the city 
beneath We now stand upon the high mountain — at our 
*eet lie twenty states, with their cities and towns, their 
temples of religion, and palaces of state. Tire tempter whis- 
pers in our ear, all these shall be yours if you will fall down and 
worship the god conquest. History stands ready with her 
pen of steel to record our determination. Shall we bow down 
to the evil spirit, and fall as other nations have fallen, or shall 
w r e maintain our virtue and rise to god-like courage and say, 
" Get thee behind me, Satan." The temptation is mighty — the 
power to resist only divine. I know of no nation, in ancient 
or modern times that would resist so easy, yet so rich, an ac- 
quisition tj its dominions. To say nothing of the heathen 
world, not one of the powers of modern Europe would with- 
stand the temptation. England would not, as she has shown 
by her conquests in the East. France would not, as she is 
now proving by her attempts upon Algeria. As to Russia, 
Prussia, Austria, let the partition of Poland answer. There, 
too, is old Spain, once the proudest and mightiest of them all, 
she has also had her temptation. It was this same Mexico 
which now fascinates us. Allured by its mines of silver and 
gold, which now entice us — excited by the spirit of propa- 
gandism, which now inspires us, she too yielded to the 
tempter, and for a while she went on from conquering to 
conquer, until in her turn, she was made to lick the dust be- 
neath the chariot wheels of that false deity she had worship- 
ped, when that chariot rolled in triumph over the fair fields 



THE FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS. 63 

of Arragon and Castile. No, sir, I can find no example of 
this high standard of national virtue and forbearance. If we 
resist this temptation, we shall set an example to the world. 
Ours the wisdom, ours the virtue, ours the glory, of forbear- 
ing to seize upon the territory of a weak and defenceless 
neighbor, when we had the opportunity and the excuse of doing 
so. We have already, in our short history, set one great 
example to the nations of the earth. We have laid the foun- 
dation of a mighty empire, deep and strong, upuii a principle 
new and startling to the old world. We have established 
self-government, and bound in strong and happy union, 
twenty millions of freemen, who acknowledge no government, 
but that of their own choice. Let us now establish another 
principle of national action, equally new and startling. Let 
us declare that wdiile we admit the oppressed of every land, 
to a free participation of the blessings of our self-government, 
no cause of war, no excuse, no temptation will induce us to 
conquer a nation by war, for the purpose of subjugating its 
territory and people to our dominion. 



XLL— THE FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS. 

J. MAXCY. 

The interposition of Divine Providence was eminently con- 
spicuous, in the first general Congress ; what men, what pa- 
triots, what independent, heroic spirits ! chosen by the un- 
biassed voice of the people ; chosen as all public servants 
ougnt to be, without favor and without fear ; what an au- 
gust assembly of sages ! Rome in the height of her glory, fades 
before it. There never was in any age, or nation, a body of 
men who for general information, for the judicious use of the 
results of civil and political history, for eloquence and virtue ; 
for true dignity, elevation and grandeur of soul, that could 
stand a comparison with the first American Congress ! See 
what the people will do when left to themselves ; to their un- 
biassed good sense, and to their true interests ! The ferocious 
Gaul would have dropped his sword at the hall-door, and 
have fled thunderstruck as from an assembly 7 of gods ! Whom 
do i Dehold ? a Hancock, a Jefferson, an Adams, a Henry, a 
Lee a Rutledge ! — Glory to their immortal spirits ! On you 



64 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

depend the destinies of your country ; the fate of three mil- 
lions of men ; and of the countless millions of their posterity ! 
Shall these he slaves, or will you make a noble stand lor 
liberty, against a power whose triumphs are already co-ex- 
tensive with the earth ; whose legions trample on thrones and 
sceptres ; whose thunders bellow on every ocean ? How tre- 
mendous the occasion ! How vast the responsibility ! The 
President and all the members of this august assembly take 
their seats. Every countenance tells the mighty struggle 
within. Every tongue is silent. It is a pause in nature, that 
solemn, awful stillness, which precedes the earthquake and 
tornado ! At length Demosthenes arises ; he is only adequate 
to the great occasion, the Virginian Demosthenes, the mighty 
Henry ! What dignity ! What majesty ! Every eye fastens 
upon him. Firm, erect, undaunted, he rolls on the mighty 
torrent of his eloquence. What a picture does he draw of the 
horrors of servitude, and the charms of freedom ! At once he 
gives the full rein to all his gigantic powers, and pours his 
own heroic spirit into the minds of his auditors ; they become 
as one man ; actuated by one soul — and the universal shout 
is " Liberty or Death !" This single speech of this illustrious 
man gave an impulse, which probably decided the fate of 
America. His eloquence seized and moved the assembled 
sages ; as the descending hail-storm, bursting in thunder, 
rending the forest, and shaking the mountains. God bestows 
on nations no greater gift, than great and good men, endowed 
with the high and commanding powers of eloquence. Such 
a man as Patrick Henry, may on some great occasion, when 
the happiness or misery of millions depends on a single deci- 
sion, render more important service to a nation, than all the 
generations of a century. 



XLIL -LIBERTY AND DESPOTISM. 

DE WITT CLINTON. 

In revolutionary times great talents and great virtues, a? 
well as great vices and great follies spring into being. The 
energies of our nature are put into requisition, and during tre 
whirlwind and the tempest, innumerable evils will be perpe- 
trated. But all the transient mischiefs of revolution are miid 



LIBERTY AND DESPOTTSM. 65 

when compared with the permanent calamities of arbitrary 
power. The one is a sweeping deluge, an awful tornado, 
which quickly passes away ; but the other is a volcano, 
continually ejecting rivers of lava — an earthquake burying 
whole countries in ruin. The alleged inaptitude of man for 
liberty is the effect of the oppressions which he has suffered ; 
and until a free government can shed its propitious influence 
over time — until perhaps, a new generation has risen up un 
der the new order of things, with new habits and new prin- 
ciples, society will be in a state of agitation and mutation ; 
faction will be the lord of the ascendant, and frenzy and fury, 
denunciation and proscription, will be the order of the day. 
The dilemma is inevitable. Either the happiness of the many 
or the predominance of the few must be sacrificed. The flame 
of liberty and the light of knowledge emanate from the same 
sacred fire, and subsist on the same element ; and the seeds of 
instruction widely disseminated will, like the serpent's teeth, 
in the pagan mythology, that were sow r n into the earth, rise 
up against oppression in the shape of the iron men of Cadmus. 
In such a case who can hesitate to make an election ? The 
factions and convulsions of free governments are not so san- 
guinary in character, or terrific in effects, as the animosities 
and intestine wars of monarchies about the succession, the in- 
surrections of the military, the proscriptions of the priesthood, 
and the cruelties of the administration. The spirit of a Re- 
public is the friend, and the genius of a monarchy is the ene- 
my of peace. The potentates of the earth have, for centuries 
back, maintained large standing armies, and, on the most 
frivolous pretexts, have created havoc and desolation. And 
when we compare the world as it is under arbitrary power, 
with the world as it was under free republics, what an aw- 
ful contrast does it exhibit ! What a solemn lesson does it 
inculcate! The ministers of famine and pestilence, of death 
and destruction, have formed the van and brought up the 
rear of despotic authority. The monuments of the arts, the 
fabrics of genius and skill, and the sublime erections of piety 
and science, have been prostrated in the dust ; the places 
where Demosthenes and Cicero spoke, where Homer and Vir- 
gil sang, and where Plato and Aristotle taught, are now ex- 
hibited as mementoes of the perishable nature of human glory. 
The forum of Rome is converted into a market for cattle ; 
the sacred fountain of Castalia is surrounded, not by the 
muses and graces, but by the semi-barbarous girls of Albania ; 



66 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

the laurel groves, and the deified heights of Parnassus, are 
the asylum of banditti ; Babylon can only be traced by its 
bricks ; the sands of the desert have overwhelmed the splen- 
did city of Palmyra, and are daily encroaching on the fertile 
territories of the Nile ; and the malaria has driven man from 
the fairest portions of Italy, and pursued him to the very gates 
of the Eternal City. 



XLTIL— RESISTANCE TO OPPRESSION". 



We are called upon as citizens and as men. by the highest 
motives of duty, interest and happiness, to resist the innova- 
tions attempted on our government ; to cultivate in ourselves 
and others the genuine sentiments of liberty, patriotism and 
virtue. After a long series of peace, prosperity and happi- 
ness, you are threatened with all the horrors and cruelties of 
war. The tempest thickens around you, and the thunder 
already begins to roar. A nation hardened in the science of 
human butchery: accustomed to victory and plunder; ex- 
onerated from all those restraints by which civilized nations 
are governed, lifts over your heads the iron sceptre of des- 
potic power. To terrify you into an unmanly submission, 
she holds up to your view Venice, shorn of her glory ; Hol- 
land, robbed, degraded and debased ; Switzerland, with her 
desolated fields, smoking villages and lofty cliffs, reeking in 
blood amidst the clouds. In the full prospect of this mighty 
group, this thickening battalion of horrors, call up all your 
courage ; fly back to the consecrated altar of your liberty, 
and while your souls kindle at the hallowed fire, invigorate 
your attachment to the birth-day of your independence ; to 
the government of your choice ; feel with additional weight 
the necessity of united wisdom, councils and exertions, and 
vow to the God of your fathers, that your lives and fortunes ; 
that everything you esteem sacred and dear ; that all your 
energies and resources, both of body and mind, are indissolu- 
bly bound to your sovereignty and freedom. On all sides you 
now behold the most energetic measures of defence. All is 
full of life, and ardor, and zeal. The brave youth, the 
flower and strength of our country, rush into the field, and 



DEMOCRACY. 07 

the eye of immortal Washington lightens along their em- 
battled ranks. Approach these hallowed shores, ye butchers, 
who have slaughtered half Europe — yon will find every de- 
file a Thermopylae, and every p.ain a Marathon ! We 

already behold our fleet whitening the clouds with its canvass, 
and sweeping the ocean with its thunder. The Gallic flag 
drops to American valor, and our intrepid sailors sing victory 
in the midst of the tempest. Fellow-citizens, it is not by 
tribute, it is not by submission — it is by resolution, it is by 
courage, that we are to save our country. Let our efforts 
and our wisdom concentrate in the common cause, and show 
to the world, that we are worthy that freedom which was 
won by the valor and blood of our fathers. Let our govern- 
ment, our religion and our liberty, fostered by our care, and 
protected by our exertions, descend through the long range 
of succeeding ages, till all the pride and presumption of 
human arrangements, shall bow to the empire of universal 
love, and the glory of all sublunary grandeur be forever ex- 
tinguished. 



XL1V.— DEMOCRACY. 

DEMOCRATIC REVIEAV. 

Democracy must finally triumph in human reason, be- 
cause its foundations are deep in the human heart. The 
great mass, whose souls are bound by a strong fraternal sym- 
pathy, once relieved from ancient prejudices, will stand forth 
as its moveless champions. It fastens the affections of men, 
as the shield of their present liberties and the ground of their 
future hopes. They perceive in it a saving faith, a redeem- 
ing truth, a regulating power. It is the only creed which 
does justice to man, or that can bind the entire race in chains 
of brotherhood and love. Nothing sinks so deep into the 
hearts of the multitude, for nothing else is so identified with 
their moral and social good. Though the high and mighty 
of the earth may deride its simple truths, these are willing to 
die in their defence. Those truths are blended too closely 
with all for which it is worthy to live and glorious to perish, 
to be relinquished without a struggle or a pang. They are 
too firmly allied to the imperishable hopes, the deathless 



68 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

aspirations, the onward triumphant march of humanity, ever 
to be deserted. The fortunes of individuals may change — 
empires be born and blotted out — kings rise and fall- — wealth, 
honor, distinction, fade as the dying pageant of a dream — but 
Democracy must live. While man lasts, it must live. Its 
origin is among the necessary relations of things, and it can 
only cease to be when eternal truth is no more. 

Democracy, in its true sense, is the last best revelation of 
human thought — I speak, of course, of that true and genuine 
Democracy which breathes the air and lives in the light of 
Christianity — whose essence is justice, and whose object is 
human progress. I have no sympathy with much that 
usurps the name, like that fierce and turbulent spirit of an- 
cient Greece, which was only the monstrous misgrowth of 
faction and fraud, or that Democracy whose only distinction 
is the slave-like observance of party usages — the dumb repe- 
tition of party creeds ; and still less for that wild, reckless 
spirit of mobism which triumphs with remorseless and fiend- 
ish exultation, over all lawful authority, all constituted 
• restraint. The object of our worship is far different from 
these ; the offering is made to a spirit which asserts a virtu- 
ous freedom of act and thought — which insists on the rights 
of men — demands the equal diffusion of every social advan- 
tage, asks the impartial participation of every gift of God — 
sympathises with the down-trodden — rejoices in their eleva- 
tion — and proclaims to the world the sovereignty, not of the 
people barely, but of immutable justice and truth. 

No other doctrine exerts a mightier power over the weal 
or woe of the whole human race. In times which are gone, 
it has been the moving spring of revolutions — has aroused 
the ferocious energies of oppressed nations — has sounded into 
the ears of despots and dynasties the fearful moanings of com- 
ing storms — has crimsoned fields of blood — has numbered 
troops of martyrs — has accelerated the downfall of emperors 
— has moved the foundations of mighty thrones. Even now 
millions of imprisoned spirits await its march with anxious 
solicitude and hope. It must go forth, like a bright angel of 
God, to unbar the prison door, to succor the needy, heal the 
sick, relieve the distressed, and pour a flood of light and iove 
into the darkened intellects arid dreary hearts of the sons of 
men. 



OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 69 



XL V.— OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 

FISHER AMES. 

Will any man affirm, the American nation is engaged 
by good faith to the British nation ; but this engagement is 
nothing to this House ! Such a man is not to be reasoned 
with — such a doctrine is a coat of mail, that would turn the 
edge of all the weapons of argument, if they were sharper 
than a sword. Will it be imagined the King of Great 
Britain and the President are mutually bound by the treaty ; 
but the two nations are free ? 

This, sir, is a cause that would be dishonored and betrayed 
if I contented myself with appealing only to the understand- 
ing. It is too cold, and its processes are too slow for the oc- 
casion. I desire to thank God, that, since he has given me 
an intellect so fallible, he has impressed upon me an instinct 
that is sure. On a question of shame and honor, reasoning 
is sometimes useless, and vain. I feel the decision in my 
pulse : if it throws no light upon the brain, it kindles a fire 
at the heart. It is not easy to deny, it is impossible to doubt, 
that a. treaty imposes an obligation on the American nation. 
It would be childish to consider the President and Senate 
obliged, and the nation and House free. What is the 
obligation ? perfect or imperfect ? If perfect, the debate is 
brought to a conclusion. If imperfect, how large a part 
of our faith is pawned ? Is half our honor put at risk, and 
is that half too cheap to be redeemed ? How long has this 
hair-splitting subdivision of good faith been discovered, and 
why has it escaped the researches of writers on the law of 
nations ? Should we add a new chapter to that law ; or 
insert this doctrine as a supplement to, or more properly a 
repeal of the ten commandments ? 

It is painful, I hope it is superfluous, to make even the 
supposition, that America should furnish the occasion of this 
opprobrium. No, let me not even imaging, that a Republi- 
can government, sprung, as our own is, from a people enlighten- 
ed and uncorrupted, a. government whose origin is right, and 
whose daily discipline is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make 
its option to be faithless ; can dare to act w T hat despots dare 
not avnw, what our own example evinces the States of Bar- 
i bary are unsuspected of. No, let me rather make the sup- 
position, that Great Britain refuses to execute the treaty, 



70 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

after we have done everything to carry it into effect. Is there 
any language of reproach pungent enough to express your 
commentary on the fact ? What would you say, or, rather, 
what would you not say ? Would you not tell them, wher- 
ever an Englishman might travel, shame would stick to him : 
he would disown his country. You would exclaim, England, 
proud of your wealth, and arrogant in the possession of power, 
blush for these distinctions, which become the vehicles of 
your dishonor. Such a nation might truly say to corruption, 
thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother 
and sister. We should say of such a race of men, their name 
is a heavier burden than their debt. 



XLVL— THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily 
in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the 
preservation of our federal union. It is to that union we owe 
our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. 
It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever 
makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached 
only by the discipline of our virtue, in the severe school of ad- 
versity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered 
finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its be- 
nign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as 
from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every 
year of its duration has teemed with fresh proof of its utility 
and its blessings, and although our country has stretched out, 
wider and wider, and our population stretched farther and 
farther, they have not overturned its protection, or its benefits. 
It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and 
personal happiness. 

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, 
to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. 1 
have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, 
when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asun- 
der. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the preci- 
pice of disunion, to see whether, in my short sight, 1 can 
fathom the depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him 



NO EXTENSION OF FREEDOM BY FORCE. 7l 

a? a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose 
thoughts should be mainly bent on considering - , not how the 
Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be 
the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and 
destroyed. 

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying 
prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond 
that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my 
day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant, that on 
my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my 
eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in 
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dis- 
honored fragments of a once glorious Union ; on States dis- 
severed, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil 
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their 
last feeble and lingering 1 glance, rather, behold the gorgeous 

C G C ' ' DO 

ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout 
the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or pol- 
luted, not a single star obscured — bearing for its motto, no 
such miserable interrogatory as — What is all this worth? 
Nor those other words of delusion and folly — liberty first, and 
union afterwards — but everywhere, spread all over in charac- 
ters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float 
over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the 
whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every true Amer- 
ican heart — liberty and union, now and forever, one and in- 
separable ! 



XLVII— NO EXTENSION OF FREEDOM BY FORGE. 

REVERDY JOHNSON. 

Sir. our institutions are telling their own story by the 
blessings they impart to us, and indoctrinating the people 
everywhere with the principles of freedom upon which they 
are founded. Ancient prejudices are yielding to their mighty 
influence. Heretofore revered, and apparently permanent 
systems of government, are falling beneath it. Our glorious 
mother, free as she has ever comparatively been, is getting to 
be freer. It has blotted out the corruptions of her political 



72 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

franchise. It has broken her religious intolerance. It has 
greatly elevated the individual character of her subjects. It 
has immeasurably weakened the power of her nobles, and by 
weakening in one sense has vastly strengthened the authority 
of her crown, by forcing it to rest for all its power and glory 
upon the breasts of its people. To Ireland too — impulsive Ire- 
land — the land of genius, of eloquence, and of valor, it is rap- 
idly carrying the blessings of a restored freedom and happi- 
ness. In France, all of political liberty which belongs to her, 
is to be traced to it ; and even now it is to be seen cheering, 
animating, and guiding the classic land of Italy, making the 
very streets of Rome itself to ring with shouts of joy and grat- 
itude lor its presence. Sir, such a spirit suffers no inactivity, 
and needs no incentive. It admits of neither enlargement 
nor restraint. Upon its own elastic and never-tiring wing, it 
is now soaring over the civilized world, everywhere leaving 
its magic and abiding charm. I say, then, try not, seek not 
to aid it. Bring no physical force to succor it. Such an ad- 
junct would serve only to corrupt and paralyze its efforts. 
Leave it to itself, and, sooner or later, man will be free. 



XLVIII.— DISUNION AND WAR INSEPARABLE. 

HENRY CLAY. 

Mr. President, I have said what I solemnly believe — 
that the dissolution of the Union and war are identical and 
inseparable ; that they are convertible terms. Such a war, 
too, as that would be, following the dissolution of the Union ! 
Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so furious, 
so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating, from the wars of 
Greece down, including those of the commonwealth of Eng- 
land, and the revolution of France — none, none of them raged 
with such violence, or was ever conducted with such blood- 
shed and enormities as will that war which shall follow that 
disastrous event — if that event ever happen — of dissolution. 

And what would be its termination ? Standing armies 
and navies, to an extent draining the revenues of each por- 
tion of the dissevered empire, would be created ; extermina- 
ting wars would follow — not a war of two or three years, but 
of interminable duration — an exterminating war would fbl- 



THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION. 73 

low, until some Philip or Alexander, some Ceesar or Napo- 
leon, would rise to cut the Gordian knot, and solve the 
capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties 
of both the dissevered portions of this Union. Can you doubt 
it ? Look at history — consult the pages of all history, an- 
cient or modern ; look at human nature — look at the char- 
acter of the contest in which you would be engaged in the 
supposition of a war following the dissolution of the Union, 
such as I have suggested — and I ask you if it is possible for 
you to doubt that the final but perhaps distant termination 
of the whole will be some despot treading down the liberties 
of the people ? — that the final result will be the extinction 
of this last glorious light which is leading all mankind, who 
are gazing upon it, to cherish hope and anxious expectation 
that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be 
advanced throughout the civilized world ? Can you lightly 
contemplate the consequences ? Can you yield yourself to a 
torrent of passion, amidst dangers which I have depicted id 
colors far short of what would be the reality, if the event 
should ever happen ? I conjure gentlemen — whether from 
the South or the North, by all they hold dear in the world — 
by all their love of liberty — by all' their veneration for their 
ancestors — by all their regard for posterity — by all their 
gratitude to Him who has bestowed upon them such 'unnum- 
bered blessings — by all the duties which they owe to man- 
kind, and all the duties which they owe to themselves — by 
all these considerations I implore them to pause — solemnly 
to pause — at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and 
disastrous leap is taken in the yawning abyss below, which 
will inevitably lead to certain and irretrievable destruction 
And, Lnally, I implore, as the best blessing which heaven 
can bestow upon me upon earth, that if the direful and sad 
event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not 
survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle. 



XLIX.— THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION". 

HENRY CLAY. 

WhaI patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this ex 
punginc ] Is it to appease the wrath, and to heal the wound- 
ed pride of the chief magistrate ? If he really be the hero 

4 



74 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean con- 
descension, all grovelling sycophancy, all self-degradation, 
and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and con- 
tempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches, and 
your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black 
lines ! Black lines ! Sir, I hope the secretary of the Senate 
will preserve the pen with which he may inscribe them, and 
present it to that senator of the majority whom he may 
select, as a proud trophy, to be transmitted to his descendants. 
And hereafter, when we shall lose the forms of our free in- 
stitutions, all that now remain to us, some future American 
monarch, in gratitude to those by whose means he has been 
enabled, upon the ruins of civil liberty, to erect a throne, and 
to commemorate especially this expunging resolution, may 
institute a new order of knighthood, and confer on it the ap- 
propriate name of the knight of the black lines. 

But why should I detain the Senate, or needlessly waste 
my breath in future exertions ? The decree has gone forth. 
It is one of urgency, too. The deed is to be done — that foul 
deed, like the blood-stained hands of the guilty Macbeth, all 
ocean's waters will never wash out. Proceed, then, to the 
noble work which lies before you, and like other skilful ex- 
ecutioners, do it quickly. And when you have perpetrated 
it, go home to the people, and tell them what glorious honors 
you have achieved lor our common country. Tell them that 
you have extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights 
that ever burned at the altar of civil liberty. Tell them that 
you have silenced one of the noblest batteries that ever thun- 
dered in defence of the constitution, and bravely spiked the 
cannon. Tell them that, henceforth, no matter what daring 
or outrageous act any president may perform, you have for- 
ever hermetically sealed the mouth of the Senate. Tell therr 
that he may fearlessly assume what power he pleases, snat°,b 
from its lawful custody the public purse, command a military 
detachment to enter the hall of the capitol, overawe Congress, 
trample down the constitution, and raze every bulwark of 
freedom ; but that the Senate must stand mute, in silent 
submission, and not dare to raise its opposing voice ; that it 
must wait until a house of representatives, humbled and sub- 
dued like itself, and a majority of it composed of the parti sar« 
of the president, shall prefer articles of impeachment. Tel 1 
them, finally, that you have restored the glorious doctrine of 
passive obedience and non-resistance, and, if the people do 



CENSURE OF AUSTRIA. 75 

not pour out their indignation and imprecations, I have yet 
to learn the character of American freemen. 



L.— CEXSURE OF AUSTRIA. 

LEWIS CASS. 

I am perfectly aware that whatever we may do or say, the 
immediate march of Austria will be onward in the course of 
despotism, with a step feebler or firmer, as resistance may 
appear near or remote, until she is stayed by one of those up- 
heavings of the people, which is as sure to come as that man 
longs for freedom, and longs to strike the blow which shall 
make it his. Pride is blind, and power tenacious, and Aus- 
trian pride and power, though they may quail before the 
signs of the times, before barricades and fraternization, by 
which streets are male fortresses, and armies revolutionized 
— new, but mighty engines in popular warfare — will hold 
out in their citadel till the last extremity. But many old 
things are passing away, and Austrian despotism will pass 
away in its turn — its bulwarks will be shaken by the rushing 
of mighty winds, and by the voice of the world — whenever a 
benignant evpression is not restrained by the kindred sympa- 
thies of arV'rarv power. I desire not to be misunderstood. 
I do not mean that in all the revolutionary struggles which 
political contests bring on, it would be expedient for other 
governments to express their feelings of interest and sympathy. 
I think they should not, for there are obvious considerat ons 
which forbid this action, and the value of this kind of moral 
interposition would be diminished by its too frequent occur- 
rence. It should be reserved for great events, marked by 
great crimes and oppression on the one side, and great mis- 
fortunes and exertions on the other, and circumstances which 
carry with them the sympathies of the world, like the parti- 
tion of Poland and the subjugation of Hungary. We can 
offer public congratulations, as we have done, to people 
crowned by success in their struggles for freedom. We can 
offer our recognition of their independence to others, as we 
have done, while yet the effort was pending. Have we 
sympathy only for the fortunate, or is a cause less dear oi 
sacred because it is prostrated in the dust at the feet of 



76 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

powei ? I freely confess that I shall hail the day with pleas- 
ure, when the government reflecting the true sentiments of 
the people, shall express its sympathy for struggling millions, 
seeking that liberty which was given to them by God, but 
has been wrested from them by man. I do not see any dan- 
ger to the true independence of nations by such a course, and 
indeed I am by no means certain, that the free interchange 
of public views in this solemn manner, would not go far 
toward checking the progress of oppression and the tendency 
to war. Why, sir, the very discussion in high places, and 
free places, even when discussion is followed by no act, is, I 
believe, a great element of retributive justice, to punish it 
when an atrocious deed is done, and a great element of moral 
power to restrain it, where such a deed is contemplated. I 
claim for our country no exemption from the decrees of their 
high tribunals, and when we are guilty of a tithe of the op- 
pression and cruelty which have made the Austrian name a 
name of reproach through the world, I hope we shall receive, 
as we shall well merit, the condemnation of mankind. 



LI.— IMPROVEMENT OF THE WEST. 

A. G. HARRISON. 

All that we ask is, to be equal with the other States oi 
this Confederacy in freedom, sovereignty, and independence 
Grant us only this, and you will see this whole country, like the 
giant that gathered strength in his wrestle with Hercules, 
every time he touched the earth, spring up with an elastic 
bound to new vigor aud power, and the proud galaxy that 
adorns your stars and stripes shine forth with a rich splendor 
which nothing but regenerated liberty can give. Enable us 
to make our roads and canals, to carry on our works of inter- 
nal improvement, to manage our own internal police, as oui 
genius and necessities may require, and you will soon witness 
the wonderful change which the uncontrolled and plastic 
power of self-government can alone accomplish ; the waste 
lands speedily sold and settled, the desert made to smile and 
blossom as a garden, the country improved and cultivated to 
its utmost limits, industry stimulated, labor rewarded with 



PLEA FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF JAMES RUMSEY. 77 

rich returns, the people prosperous and happy, and the 
country rich with every blessing. 

What a guarantee to the perpetuity and stability of the 
government, living in the hearts of its own people, and bor- 
rowing its own lustre and glory from their proud, prosperous, 
and independent condition. And, permit me to tell you, that 
deep and firm as may be the foundations of our country, still 
deeper will they be made by the policy which is before you. 
Let me beseech you to cast aside your prejudices, to throw 
off from your eyes the scales which have so long blinded you, 
and to come up to this mighty aud momentous question with 
nothing but the holy impulses of patriotism directing your 
heart ; and you will see inscribed upon our banners Truth 
and Justice, as all for which we would appeal to you, or 
ask at your hands. Our strength will be yours. The glory 
that may surround us will radiate its effulgence to every 
portion of our common country, and the same destiny that 
awaits us and our children will be indissolubly connected 
with your own ; and should any great event in the 
changes of life and the vicissitudes of the affairs of nations 
ever take place, to pull up the deep foundations of our 
government, and tear down our noble edifice, let me tell you 
that in the general wreck of the liberties of the country, the 
last spark will be found flickering on the plains of the West 
in the domicils of the humble tillers of the earth. 



LIL— PLEA FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF JAMES RUMSEY. 

EDWARD RUMSEY. 

I have stood upon the bank of the beautiful river which 
washes the broad border of my own beloved State, and con- 
templated the majestic steam palace in her proud career, 
exchanging with rapidity and cheapness the productions of 
different climes, conveying with comfort and expedition the 
travelling public, giving new life and energy to commerce, 
to agriculture, to national industry and enterprise : I say, 
sir, I have stood in musing mood upon the shore of the fair 
Ohio, and viewed the noble steamer moving victorious 
against wind and current, 

" Walking the waters like a thing of life," 



78 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

and then reflected that the only son of the man who first 
seriously attracted the attention of the skilful and ingenious 
to the subject — the only son of the man who first, by ac- 
tual trial, proved its practicability — the only son of the 
man who, in his arduous struggles to perfect and present to 
the world the steamboat, expended his little fortune, banished 
himself from his home and his country, and in spite of all 
obstacles, was pushing onward to success, when arrested by 
sudden death. When I have reflected that the only son of 
this man was toiling for his daily bread, smitten by his God, 
and neglected by his country — when I have contemplated 
that and this spectacle, the steamboat and the unfortunate 
son of its inventor, feelings, emotions, reflections, have 
crowded upon me, of a character which, as a patriot, a phi- 
lanthropist, and a Christian, I acknowledge it was improper 
and sinful to entertain. To the support of that stricken one 
I have thought his country abounding in resources, with 
more hundreds of millions of public domain than she can 
squander in ages, might contribute something more substan- 
tial than a medal, without any extraordinary stretch of liber- 
ality. But it is not for me to solicit it even for him. I shall 
be gratified, deeply gratified, if the government of his coun- 
try shall honor the memory of his father for all his sacrifices 
and all his services by the adoption of this resolution. 



LIIL— THE SABBATH. 

T. FRELIXGHUYSEN. 

Mr. President — The Sabbath was made for man — not to 
be contemned and forgotten — the constitution of his nature 
requires just such a season. It is identified with his pur- 
suits, and his moral tendencies. God has ordained it in infi- 
nite benevolence. The reason for its institution, as recorded 
in his word, was his own example. It began with creation. 
The first week of time was blessed with a Sabbath. The 
garden of Eden would not have smiled in all its loveliness, 
had not the light of this day shone upon it. Blot it out, and 
the hope of the world is extinguished. When the whirl- 
wind raged in France, how was it, sir ? They could not 
carry their measures of ferocity and blood, while this last 



THE SABBATH. 79 

palladium of virtue remained. Desolation seemed to pause 
in its course, its waves almost subsided : when the spirit of 
evil struck this hallowed day from the calendar, and enacted 
a decade to the Gfoddess of Reason — after which the besom 
swept all before it. 

Our own experience must satisfy us that it is essential tc 
the welfare of our condition. Put the mind to any action of 
its powers —let its energies be exerted incessantly, with no 
season for abstraction and repose, and it would very soon sink 
under a task so hostile to its nature : it would wear out in 
such hard service. So let the pursuits of business constantly 
engage our speculations, and the whole year become one un- 
varied calculation of profit and loss, with no Sabbath to 
open an hour for the return of higher and nobler feelings, and 
the heart will become the victim of a cold and debasing sel- 
fishness, and have no greater susceptibility than the nether 
mill-stones. And if in matters that are lawful, such conse- 
quences would ensue, what will be the results of a constant, 
unbroken progression in vice ! Sir, I tremble at the prospect 
for my country. If this barrier against the augmenting flood 
of evil be prostrated, all your penalties and prisons will oppose 
an utterly inefficient check. Irreligion will attain to a mag- 
nitude and hardihood that will scorn the restraints of your 
laws. Law, sir ! of what avail can this be against the cor- 
rupted sentiment of a whole people ? Let us weigh the in- 
teresting truth — that a free people can only flourish under 
the control of moral causes ; and it is the Sabbath which 
gives vigor, and energy, and stability to these causes. The 
nation expects that the standard of sound principles will be 
raised here. Let us give it a commanding elevation. Let its 
tone be lofty. It is in this way we should expect to excite 
the enthusiasm of patriotism, or any other virtue. When 
we would awaken in our youth the spirit of literary emula- 
tion, we spread out to their vision a rugged path and a dirri- 
rult ascent, and raise the prize of fame high above the reach 
nf any pursuit, but an ardent, laborious, and vigorous reach 
i>f effort, If we would kindle the love of country, we do not 
humble her claims to a miserable posture, just above down- 
right indifference — but we point to a devoted Leonidas, and 
the brightest names of the scroll, and thus urge our youth 
onward and upward. Let us, then, sir, be as wise and faith- 
ful in the cultivation of sound moral principles. 



80 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

LIV.— INVIDIOUS DISTINCTIONS. 

IIUGH S. LEGARE. 

Sir, as a Southern man, I represent equally rent, capital; 
and wages, which are confounded in our estates ; and I pro- 
test against attempts to array, without cause, without a color 
of pretext or plausibility, the different classes of society against 
each other, as if, in such a country as this, there could be any 
natural hostility or any real distinction between them — a 
country in which all the rich, with hardly an exception, 
have been poor, and all the poor may one day be rich — a 
country in which banking institutions have been of immense 
service, precisely because they have been most needed by a 
people who had all their fortunes to make by good character 
and industrious habits. Look at that remarkable picture — 
remarkable not as a work of art, but as a monument of his- 
tory — which you see in passing through the rotunda. Two 
out of five of that immortal committee were mechanics, and 
such men ! In the name of God, sir, why should any one 
study to pervert the natural good sense and kindly feelings 
of this moral and noble people — to infuse into their minds a 
sullen envy towards one another, instead of that generous 
emulation which everything in their situation is fitted to in- 
spire — to breathe into them the spirit of Cain, muttering deep 
curses and meditating desperate revenge against his brother, 
because the smoke of his sacrifice has ascended to heaven be- 
fore his own ! And do not they who treat our industrious 
classes as if they were in the same debased and wretched 
condition as the poor of Europe, insult them by the compar- 
ison ? Why, sir, you do not know what poverty is. We 
have no poor in this country, in the sense in which that word 
is used abroad. Every laborer, even the most humble, in the 
United States soon becomes a capitalist, and even if he 
choose, a proprietor of land ; for the West, with all its bound- 
less fertility, is open to him. How can any one dare to com- 
pare the mechanics of this land (whose inferiority, in any 
substantial particular, in intelligence, in virtue, in wealth, to 
the other classes of our society, I have yet to learn) with that 
race of outcasts, of which so terrific a picture is presented by 
recent writers — the poor of Europe ? a race, among no in* 
considerable portion of whom famine and pestilence may be 
said to dwell continually; many of whom are without mor- 



EULOGY ON YELL. 81 

als, without education, without a country, without a God ! 
and may be said to know society only by the terrors of its 
penal code, and to live in perpetual war with it. Poor bond- 
men ! mocked with the name of liberty, that they may be 
sometimes tempted to break their chains, in order that, after 
a lew days of starvation in idleness and dissipation, they may 
be driven back to their prison house to take them up again, 
heavier and more galling than before ; severed, as it has been 
touchingly expressed, from nature, from the common air, and 
the light of the sun ; knowing only by hearsay that the fields 
are green, that the birds sing, and that there is a perfume in 
flowers. And is it with a race whom the perverse institu- 
tions of Europe have thus degraded beneath the condition of 
humanity, that the advocates, the patrons, the protectors of 
our working-men, presume to compare them ? Sir, it is to 
treat them with a scorn at which their spirit should revolt, 
and does revolt. 



LV.— EULOGY ON YELL. 

H. BEDIXGER. 

The gentleman spoke of the gallant conduct of a certain 
heroic young officer who now has a seat in the other branch 
of our National Legislature, and of several other gallant men 
of the South, whose heroic deeds shall never die. But, sir, 
there was one whose name, greatly to my regret, he did not 
mention ; I say greatly to my regret, only because I know, 
that with his accustomed ability and fervent feeling, he 
would have done such justice to the memory of that gallant 
hero as it never can receive from any poor eulogy of mine. I 
speak, sir, of one with w T hom I had the honor of a personal 
acquaintance, between whom and myself there existed an in- 
timacy which, to me, was always a source of pride and pleas- 
ure ; of one who, but a short time ago, stood with us upon 
this floor, and participated in our deliberations ; one whose 
manly and dignified character, whose urbane and courteous 
manners, and whose unquestioned integrity, assigned to him 
the very highest place in the estimation of all who knew him. 
Sir, I shall never forget his conduct and bearing when the 
news first reached him, of the uncalled-for, unprovoked, and 

4* 



82 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

infamous outrages perpetrated by the Mexicans upon oui 
troops and our soil. I shall never forget his gallant bearing 
on that occasion ; his flashing eye, his indignant exclama- 
tions, and the earnest manner in which he declared his in- 
tention to take part in the vengeance which he knew his 
country would wreak upon those who had thus rashly dared 
to violate her soil and insult her flag. Sir, the first peal of 
the tocsin had barely reached us — the alarm of war had 
barely rung out in the land, when he resigned his seat upon 
this floor, flew to the standard of his country, and upon the 
glorious field of Buena Vista poured out his life's-blood in de- 
fence of her honor and her rights. Sir, I have never heard 
the name of that gallant man mentioned on this floor, in any 
of the many complimentary notices which have been taken 
of our army and our officers. Yet of one thing I am very 
certain : I do know, that so long as patriotism, so long as self- 
sacrificing devotion to country, shall be deemed a virtue wor- 
thy of the estimation of mankind — so long as bravery, chival- 
ry, and noble daring shall be prized by the American peo- 
ple — so long shall live in their grateful recollections, so long 
shall flourish and grow green in their hearts, the name, the 
memory, and the virtues of Archibald Yell. 



LVL— GENOA IN HER BEAUTY. 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

Let me bring to your mind Genoa, called the Superb City 
of Palaces, dear to the memory of American childhood as the 
birthplace of Christopher Columbus, and one of the spots 
first enlightened by the morning beams of civilization, whose 
merchants were princes, and whose rich argosies, in those 
early days, introduced to Europe the choicest products of the 
East, the linen of Egypt, the spices of Arabia, and the silks 
of Samarcand. She still sits in queenly pride, as she sat 
then, — her mural crown studded with towers — her churches 
rich with marble floors and rarest pictures — her palaces of 
ancient doges and admirals yet spared by the hand of time — 
her close streets, thronged by one hundred thousand inhabi- 
tants — at the foot of the maritime Alps, as they descend to 
the blut? and tideless waters of the Mediterranean Sea — lean 



BEST POLICY IN REGARD TO NATURALIZATION. 83 

ing with her back against their strong mountain-sides, over- 
shadowed by the foliage of the fig-tree and the olive, while 
the orange and lemon fill with their perfume the air where 
reigns perpetual spring. Who can contemplate such a city 
without delight ? 



LVII.— BEST POLICY IN REGARD TO NATURALIZATION". 

LEWIS C. LEVIN. 

Each hour will behold this tide of foreign emigration 
rising higher and higher, growing stronger and stronger, 
ms' ing bolder and bolder. 

The past furnishes no test of the future, and the future 
threatens to transcend all calculations of this formidable evil. 
View this great subject in any light, and it still flings back 
upon us the reflected rays of reason, patriotism, and philan- 
thropy. The love of our native laud is an innate, holy, and 
irradicable passion. Distance only strengthens it — time only 
concentrates the feeling that causes the tear to gush from the 
eye of the emigrant, as old age peoples by the vivid memory 
the active present with the happy past. In what land do 
we behold the foreigner, who denies this passion of the heart? 
It is nature's most holy decree, nor is it in human power to 
repeal the law, which is passed on the mother's breast, and 
confirmed by the father's voice. The best policy of the wise 
statesman is to model his laws on the holy ordinances of na- 
ture. If the heart of the alien is in his native land — if all 
his dearest thoughts and fondest affections cluster around the 
altar of his native gods — let us not disturb his enjoyments by 
placing this burden of new affections on his bosom, through 
the moral force of an oath of allegiance, and the onerous ob- 
ligation of political duties that are against his sympathies, and 
call on him to renounce feelings that he can never expel from 
his bosom. Let us secure him the privilege at least of mourn- 
ing for his native land, by withholding obligations he cannot 
discharge either with fidelity, ability, or pleasure. Give him 
time, sir, to wean himself from his early love. A long list 
of innumerable duties will engage all his attention during his 
political novitiate, in addition to those comprised in reforming 
the errors and prejudices of the nursery, and in creating and 



84 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

forming new opinions, congenial to the vast field which lies 
spread before him in morals, politics, and life. A due reflec- 
tion will convince every alien, when his passions are not in- 
flamed by the insidious appeals of senseless demagogues, that 
his highest position is that of a moral agent in the full enjoy- 
ment of all the attributes of civil freedom, preparing the 
minds and hearts of his children to become faithful, intelli- 
gent, and virtuous republicans, born to a right that vindicates 
itself by the holy ties of omnipotent nature, and which, while 
God sanctions and consecrates, no man can dispute. 



LVIIL— AN APPEAL FOR OREGON. 

J. J. m'dowell. 

Is the American heart dead that pulsated so nobly and 
patriotically in days gone by ? Is there no remaining love 
for the graves of our ancestors, our honor, and our liberty ? 
No, that heart is not dead, thank God ! I heard the voice, 
the other day, on this floor, of an aged and venerable member 
from Massachusetts, who lived far back in the eighteenth 
century, asserting that the whole of Oregon was ours, and 
that the question ought now to be settled. Sir, my heart 
throbbed a warm response to that patriotic declaration, com- 
ing from one who has lived and acted with that noble baud 
of patriots that gave birth to this Republic, imparting to it 
that vitality and vigor that command the love and admira- 
tion of all who can appreciate the liberality of her principles 
or the sublimity of her destiny. He seemed to be the only 
remaining one of that group of intellectual constellations that 
shone in times gone by, and threw a lustre upon the history 
of their own country and of the world, that time nor circum- 
stances can obscure or destroy. Though the ravages of time 
are visible in the palsied hand that was raised in attestation 
of our right to Oregon, and the spray of the political Jordan 
he had passed, with other worthies that were no more, still 
was white upon his locks, yet there beat in that bosom on 
this question an^American heart ; aye, sir, it pulsates with a 
warmth that was imparted to it by the fire that fell upon it 
from the altar of liberty, at which he and the fathers of the 
Constitution worshipped together in days gone by. May its 



ALWAYS READY BUT NEVER RASH. 85 

grenial heat be imparted to the heart of every man in this 
House and to the heart of the whole American people ! 

Sir, I fancy that I hear the people of the West responding 
to the sentiments uttered by that venerable man — that the 
mighty heart of that great giantess has begun to pulsate with 
a double vigor, and that I hear the echo of its throbs across 
the Alleghauies. Yes ! I fancy that I see gathering upon her 
brow a tempest of indignation, that will burst upon the de- 
voted heads of any set of men, or party, that would defeat 
ihe consummation of the measures before the House for the 
lull occupation of Oregon, and the protection of our citizens ; 
or that would surrender one foot of our territory there to 
satiate the cupidity of Great Britain. Her sons would prefer 
making the territory north of forty-nine degrees their burying- 
grouud, rather than seal, by its surrender to by peace from 
England, the infamy and eternal disgrace of their country. 
They ask nothing but what is just, and will not submit to 
anything that is wrong. She offers the noble bosoms of her 
sous, as a living, unconquerable bulwark, to protect the coun- 
try and our rights. She asks the boon at the hands of this 
government of rearing aloft the stars and stripes, and planting 
them on every hill-top and valley in Oregon — aye, sir, on the 
shores of the mighty Pacific, there to guard them with her 
noblest sons, and there to let them wave in triumph, till the 
glorious principles of liberty and Christianity shall have be- 
girt the world, and consummated universal liberty, civil and 
religious, to man. 



LIX.— ALWAYS READY BUT NEVER RASH. 

H. BEDINGER. 

Those who, like myself, have stood amid the sublime 
scenery at Harper's Ferry, and watched the eagle there in his 
favorite haunts, now perched in solitary grandeur on some 
tall peak or towering crag — now wheeling into the heavens 
with his eye upon the sun — those who have delighted to 
watch him thus, know something of his nature and his habits. 
They know he is never rash, that he makes no unnecessary 
noise, or idle fluttering ; that he never strikes until he is 
ready, and when he does strike, it is with the rapidity and 



86 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

deadly certainty of heaven's lightning! I witnessed there, 
upon one occasion, sir, a scene which I wish I had the skill 
or ability to depict, for it was very beautiful. There was a 
black, lowering, and portentous cloud in the west, charged 
with thunder ; over its dark bosom the red lightning gleam- 
ed and danced, and the voice of the thunder came forth in 
tones which shook the hills. An eagle came swooping on 
from the east, directly in the face of the cloud itself. On- 
ward he came with the rapidity of an arrow, seemingly re- 
solved to penetrate the dark barrier, and make his onward 
way in spite of all resistance. Now he plunged into the 
dark bosom of the cloud, as if determined to snatch the 
lightnings of heaven. Anon he wheeled aloft as if resolved 
to scale the summit ; and his shriek came forth in fierce de- 
fiance of the angry thunder. But suddenly he made one 
majestic swoop — not backward, sir, no retreat in his nature 
— but directly along the very verge of the cloud, skirting this 
Blue Ridge, and perched himself upon one of its loftiest peaks. 
He paused one moment, with bowed wings and glancing eyes 
— the cloud blew over without even the smallest pattering 
of rain, the sun came out again from the cloudless heaven, 
the eagle sprang from his perch and pursued his course far in 
the dim regions of the trackless West ! 

So, sir, might it be with us, if we could but curb our im- 
petuosity and imprudence ; if we could but pause and ponder, 
and wait, for a brief period, the dark cloud now lowering upon 
our political horizon would pass away without difficulty of 
danger, and the " Eagle of America" would take its onward 
flight, unresisted and unopposed, to the rich regions of Oregon. 



LX.— SECESSION. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Secession ! Peaceable Secession ! Sir, your eyes and 
mine are never destined to see that miracle. The dismem- 
berment of this vast country without convulsion ! The 
breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruf- 
fling the surface ! Who is so foolish — I beg everybody's pardon 
— as to expect to see any such thing ? Sir, he who sees 
these States, now revolving in harmony around a common 
centre, and expects to see them quit their places and fly ofF 



SECESsrox. 8*7 

without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the 
heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against 
each other in the realms of space, without producing the 
crush of the universe. There can he no such thing as a 
peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impos- 
sibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live here 
— covering this whole country — is it to be thawed and melt- 
ed away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt 
under the influence of a vernal sun — disappear almost unob- 
served, and die off? No, sir! no, sir! I will not state w T hat 
might produce the disruption of the States ; but, sir, I see it 
as plainly as I see the sun in heaven — I see that disruption 
must produce such a war as I will not describe in its twofold 
characters. 

Peaceable secession ! peaceable secession ! The concurrent 
agreement of all the members of this great Republic to sepa- 
rate ! A voluntary separation with alimony on the one side 
and on the other. Why, what would be the result ? Where 
is the line to be drawn ? What States are to secede ? What 
is to remain American ? What am I to be ? — an American 
no longer ? Where is the flag of the Republic to remain ? 
Where is the eagle still to tower ? or is he to cower, and 
shrink, and fall to the ground ? Why, sir, our ancestors — 
our fathers, and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet 
living among us with prolonged lives — would rebuke and 
reproach us ; and our children, and our grandchildren, would 
cry out, shame upon us ! if we, of this generation, should 
dishonor these ensigns of the power of the Government, and 
the harmony of the Union, which is every day felt among us 
with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the 
army ? What is to become of the navy ? What is to 
become of the public lands ? How is each of the thirty States 
to defend itself? 

*■ * * # # # 

Sir, I am ashamed to pursue this line of remark. I dislike 
it — I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of 
natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than 
to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up ! to break 
up this great Government ! to dismember this great country ! 
to astonish Europe with an act of folly, such as Europe for 
two centuries has never beheld in any government ! No, 
sir ! no, sir ! There will be no secession. Gentlemen are 
not serious when they talk of secession. 



88 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



• LXL— PEACEFUL CONQUESTS. 

JOHN A. DIX. 

In the extension of our commercial intercourse, we have 
not, like our Anglo-Saxon mother, been seen hewing down 
with the sword, with unrelenting and remorseless determina- 
tion, every obstacle which opposed itself to her progress. Our 
career thus far has been stained by no such companionship 
with evil. Our conquests have been the peaceful achieve- 
ments of enterprise and industry — the one leading the way 
into the wilderness, the other following and completing the 
acquisition by the formal symbols of occupancy and posses- 
sion. They have looked to no objects beyond the conversion 
of uninhabited wilds into abodes of civilization and freedom. 
Their only arms were the axe and the ploughshare. The 
accumulations of wealth they have brought were all ex- 
tracted from the earth by the unoffending hand of labor. 
If, in the progress of our people westward, they shall occupy 
territories not our own, but to become ours by amicable ar- 
rangements with the government to which they belong, 
which of the nations of the earth shall venture to stand 
forth, in the face of the civilized world, and call on us to 
pause in this great work of human improvement ? It is as 
much the interest of Europe as it is ours, that we should be 
permitted to follow undisturbed the path which, in the allot- 
ment of national fortunes, we seem appointed to tread. Our 
country has long been a refuge for those who desire a larger 
liberty than they enjoy under their own rulers. It is an out- 
let for the political disaffection of the old world — for social 
elements which might have become sources of agitation, but 
which are here silently incorporated into our system, ceasing 
to be principles of disturbance as they attain the greater free- 
dom which was the object of their separation from less con- 
genial combinations in other quarters of the globe. Nay, 
more ; it is into the vast reservoir of the western wilderness, 
teeming with fruitfulness and fertility, that Europe is con- 
stantly pouring, under our protection, her human surpluses, 
unable to draw from her own bosom the elements of their 
support. She is literally going along with us in our march 
to prosperity and power, to share with us its triumphs and 
its fruits. Happily, this continent is not a legitimate theatre 
for the political arrangements of the sovereigns of the eastern 



A STRIKING PICTURE. 89 

hemisphere. Their armies may range, undisturbed by us, 
over the plains of Europe, Asia, and Africa, dethroning 
monarchs, partitioning kingdoms, and subverting republics, 
as interest or caprice may dictate. But political justice de- 
mands that in one quarter of the globe self-government, free- 
dom, the arts of peace, shall be permitted to work out, un- 
molested, the great purposes of human civilization. 



LXIL— A STRIKING PICTURE. 

^ EDWARD EVERETT. 

At length the revolution, with all this grand civil and 
military preparation, came on ; and that I could paint out 
in worthy colors the magnificent picture ! The incidents, 
the characters, are worthy of the drama. What names, 
what men ! Chatham, Burke, Fox, Franklin, the Adamses, 
Washington, Jefferson, and all the chivalry, and all the di- 
plomacy of Europe and America. The voice of generous dis- 
affection sounds beneath the arches of St. Stephen's ; and 
the hall of Congress rings with an eloquence like that which 

"Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece, 
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne." 

Then contemplate the romantic groups that crowd the mili- 
tary scene ; all the races of men, and all the degrees of civi- 
lization, brought upon the stage at once — the English vete- 
ran ; the plaided Highlander ; the hireling peasantry of 
Hesse Cassel and Anspach ; the gallant chevaliers of Po- 
land ; the well-appointed legions of France, led by her 
polished noblesse ; the hardy American yeoman, his leather 
apron not always thrown aside ; the mounted rifleman ; the 
painted savage. At one moment, we hear the mighty 
armadas of Europe thundering in the Antilles. Anon we be- 
hold the blue-eyed Brunswickers, whose banners told, in 
their tattered sheets, of the victory of Minden, threading 
the wilderness between St. Lawrence and Albany, under 
an accomplished British gentleman, and capitulating to the 
American forces, commanded by a naturalized Virginian, 
who had been present at the capture of Martinico, and was 
shot through the body at Braddock's defeat. While the grand 



90 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

drama is closed at Yorktown, with the storm of the British 
lines, by the emulous columns of the French and American 
army, the Americans, led by the heroic La Fayette, a scion 
of the oldest French nobility ; a young New York lawyer, 
the gallant and lamented Hamilton, commanding the ad- 
vanced guard. 



LXIIL— POWER OF WEALTH PRODUCED BY LABOR. 

TRISTAM BURGESS. 

Sir, in this age of the world, the wealth of nations de- 
pends on their labor. There was a time, nay, for many ages, 
plunder was the great resource of nations. The first king- 
dom established on earth was sustained by the conquest and 
pillage of many nations ; and " great Babylon, the glory of 
the Chaldean empire," was built and adorned by the spoil 
of all Asia. The exorbitant wealth of one nation, thus ob- 
tained, gave an example to the world, and awakened the 
ambition, and sharpened the avarice of others ; until the As- 
syrian was conquered and plundered by the Persian, the Per- 
sian by the Macedonian, and he, at last, devoured by the Ro- 
man power. The wolf which nursed their founder seems to 
have given a hunger for prey, insatiable, to the whole nation. 
Perhaps there was not a house, nor a temple, between the 
Atlantic and the Euphrates, which was not plundered by 
some one of that nation of marauders. Sir, the tide of 
ages, century after century, had rolled over the last fragment 
of Roman power ; the light of science dawned on the world, 
and a knowledge of letters was disseminated by the press, 
before men seemed to believe that our Creator had, in fact, 
announced to the first of our race, that " by the sweat of 
his face man should eat his bread all the days of his life." 
No one cause has done so much in changing that character 
from war and plunder, as that pure, meek, and quiet philoso- 
phy, which has taught all men to "do unto others as they 
would that others should do unto them." Rebuked by this 
divine precept, men have sheathed the sword, and put their 
hand to the plough ; they have mined the earth, and not for 
the instruments of war, but for the machines of labor. If, 
now, war break out, it is not for plunder ; cities are not given 



MODERN IDOL WORSHIP. 91 

up to pillage ; captives are not sold for slaves ; territories do 
not change owners ; men return again with eagerness to the 
habits of peace., and do not look to the labors of the camp, 
but to those of the plough, the loom, and the sail, for emolu- 
ment and wealth. 

Wealth is power; and the defence of every nation depends 
on its wealth. The wealth of a nation is its labor, its skill, 
its machinery, its abundant control of all the great agents of 
nature employed in production. What but a mighty phalanx 
of labor, an almost boundless power of consumption and re- 
production, has defended, and now sustains England in all 
the athletic vigor of the most glorious days of that extraor- 
dinary nation ? With a valor truly Spartan she builds no 
wall against the wars of the world. The little island, acces- 
sible at a thousand points, and often within gun-shot of the 
embattled fleets of her enemies, has not, for more than seven 
hundred years, been stepped upon by a hostile foot. What 
has enabled her to do this ?, Her untiring labor ; her unrival- 
led skill ; her unequalled machinery ; her exhaustless capital, 
and unbounded control over all the agents of production. 
This manufacturing nation, in the last war of Europe, exhib- 
ited a spectacle never before seen by the world. She stoou 
alone against the embattled continent ; and, at last, with her 
own spindle and distaff, demolished a despotism, an iron pyra- 
mid of power, built on a base of all Europe. 



LXIV.— MODERN IDOL WORSHIP. 

FELEG SFRAGtJE. 

The people love their Constitution, their liberties, and 
themselves. But they are not infallible. I should be false 
to all history, false to human nature, false to holy writ, if I 
could so flatter the people as to tell them that they were ex- 
empt from that great, besetting sin, a proneness to idolatry. 
It is of the nature of man to worship the work of his own 
hands, to bow down to idols which he has set up. Feeble, 
fallible mortals like themselves are canonized and deified. 
And oftentimes a military chieftain, having wrought real or 
fancied deliverance by successful battles — fervent gratitude, 
unbounded admiration, the best feelings of our nature, rush 



92 THE BOOK OF E/LOQUENCE. 

toward him ; the excited imagination invests him with a glo- 
rious halo, circling around him with all the splendid perfec- 
tions and dazzling attributes of heroes and patriots ; and 
then the strongest facts, the clearest evidence, and the most 
cogent reasoning, which expose his errors or ambition, excite 
only indignation and resentment toward their authors, as im- 
pious and sacrilegious revilers of the idol of their hearts. 

Such are the delusions which have placed the iron sceptre 
in the hands of the Caesars and Bonapartes of past ages, and 
overwhelmed or jeopardized all the free governments of the 
earth. So strong is this proclivity of our species, that if 
there were to be a government sent directly from Heaven, 
we may reverently fear that it would endanger its continua- 
tion. If there were one to be, did I say ? There has been : 
the theocracy of the Jews, w r hose history presents the most 
melancholy examples of this deadly sin. And is there not 
in this, our American Israel, which has been delivered from 
the house of bondage, guided through the wilderness, and is 
now in the land of promise — an idol chief to whom our in- 
cense and our homage is demanded ? Thank Heaven, there 
is a remnant still unsubdued and undismayed ; there are 
those, even here, who have not bowed, and will not bow the 
knee to Baal. 

Sir, this delusion will vanish ; the morning will dawn 
upon us ; the peeple, the honest, the pure-minded people, 
will awake — awake as from a dream — and look back upon 
these scenes as upon the troubled visions of the night. The 
delusion will be dissipated. 



LXV.— JUSTICE TO FRONTIER-MEN. 

BAILIE PEYTON. 

The gentleman has classed these men with " plunderers 
-jtnd savage murderers." These men were no " plunderers.'* 
jSTo, sir ; they were soldiers, true and pure ; and a soldier 
never stains his hands with "plunder." The brave are 
always tender and humane. They " plunderers 1" What 
temptation was there in the frowning forest of the "West to 
invite to " plunder ?" None, sir ! none. The wild beast 
and the naked savage, armed with all his instruments of 



JUSTICE TO FRONTIER-MEN. 93 

death — the gun, the knife, the axe, and fagot — were the 
allurements held out. It was not every one whose tasle 
would have led him to partake in such " plunder." The 
harvest, sir, was often smoking cabins, murdered wives and 
children, scalped and mangled sires. They "murderers!" 
They left their firesides and patrimonial farms in Carolina 
and Virginia, to protect our mothers from murder, from 
savage torture ; and, sir, the social and domestic virtues 
found an asylum in the forest. The strongest rampart was 
thrown around them — the chivalry of these men. And this 
reflection soothed and quieted the pang which wrung their 
bosoms when they stood upon the last hill which overlooked 
their homes, where youthful feeling clung and hovered. 

What ! cast an imputation upon the names of Boon, Robin- 
son, and Spencer, and their brave compeers ! Class these 
men with the savage, in want of honor and humanity ! 
They were patriots, benefactors of the West, who deserved to 
live in marble, and not to be remembered with reproach and 
scorn. 

Sir, if I were to ask you to point me to the most cruel, 
bloody, and vindictive of all the mother country's acts, which 
marked her war upon the colonies, what would be the 
answer ? That she excited the savages, unkennelled the 
blood-hounds of the forest, who knew no mercy, who spared 
neither age nor sex, to war upon the American people. " In 
the issue which was made up before high heaven," "whether 
England should rule, or America be free," were not the 
savages used as instruments and allies of Great Britain, to 
subjugate the colonies ? Was it not a part of our revolution- 
ary struggle, to resist those savages ? Where did this vin- 
dictive and unrelenting policy fall most heavily ? Upon the 
West ; and, sir, the West met it, as she has since met perils 
from the same quarter, and as I trust she will ever meet 
them, come from where they may. It was patriotic in 
Washington to resist the civilized armies of Great Britain, 
but not so in Boon to resist her gentle and persuasive instru- 
ments of savage warfare in the West ! What kept back the 
depredations of these allies from the interior ? The best of 
ramparts for a nation's safety — the chivalry of her frontier 
citizens. And, sir, shall such a race of men, who achieved ■ 
so much, be branded with epithets ? — have their scalps put, 
in their country's estimation, against an Indian's scalp — 
their humanity against the humanity of an Indian — their 



94 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

honor against the honor of a savage — while other soldiers of 
the revolution have won for themselves immortal honor, and 
freedom for their country? No, sir, it is not just to treat 
them so. If any soldier of the revolution stand in patriotic 
merit above another, it is he who fought the solitary fight in 
far and distant parts. No flag — no spirit-stirring fife and 
drum to cheer him on — no Washington to lead him up in 
confidence to battle — no pay, no arms, nor ammunition fur- 
nished — no clohes nor meat — his name upon no roll — he 
fights from high impulse and love of country, not for pay, or 
"plunder;" and, if he falls, no stone to tell the spot — no 
book is written about him ; but if a monument at all, it is 
left by the hand of a hunter, carved in the bark of the tree 
that shades his grave. And if he lives, and is old and poor, 
a wanderer from house to house, there is no pension for him. 
No, sir, no pension. Why ? His name is not enrolled in a book ! 



LXVI— NORTHERN LABORERS. 

CHARLES NAYLOR. 

I am a Northern laborer. Aye, sir, it has been my lot to 
have inherited, as my only patronage, at the early age of 
nine years, nothing but naked orphanage, and utter destitu- 
tion ; houseless and homeless, fatherless and penniless, I was 
obliged, from that day forward to earn my daily bread by my 
daily labor. And now, sir — now, sir, when I take my seat 
in this hall as a free representative of a free people, am I to 
be sneered at as a Northern laborer, and degraded into a 
comparison with the poor, oppressed, and suffering negro 
slave ? Is such the genius and spirit of our institutions ? If 
it be, then did our fathers fight, and bleed, and struggle, and 
die in vain ! 

But, sir, the gentleman has misconceived the spirit and 
tendency of Northern institutions. He is ignorant of North- 
ern character. He has forgotten the history of his country. 
Preach insurrection to the Northern laborers ! Preach insur- 
rection to one! Who are the Northern laborers? The his- 
tory of your country is their history. The renown of your 
country is their renown. The brightness of their doings is 
emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the 



DISCUSSION OF WEBSTER AND HAYNE. 95 

deeds and doings of Northern laborers, and the history of 
your country presents but a universal blank. 

Sir, who was he that disarmed the thunderer, wrested from 
his grasp the bolts of Jove, calmed the troubled ocean, be- 
came the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, 
shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized 
world — whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to 
honor ; who participated in the achievement of your inde- 
pendence ; prominently assisted in moulding your free insti- 
tutions ; and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be 
felt till the last moment of recorded time ? Who, sir, I 
ask, was he ? A Northern laborer ; a Yankee tallow chand- 
ler's son ; a printer's runaway boy! And who, let me ask 
the honorable gentleman, was he that, in the days of our 
Revolution, led forth a Northern army, yes, an army of 
Northern laborers, and aided the chivalry of South Carolina 
in their defence against British aggression, drove the spoilers 
from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields from foreign 
invaders — who was he ? A Northern laborer, a Rhode 
Island blacksmith — the gallant General Greene ; who left 
his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to 
conquer, in the battles of our independence ! And will you 
preach insurrection to men like these ? 

Sir, our country is full of the glorious achievements of 
Northern laborers. Where are Concord, and Lexington, and 
Princeton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but 
in the North ? And what, sir, has shed an imperishable re- 
nown on the never-dying names of those' hallowed spots, but 
the blood and the struggles, the high daring, and patriotism, 
and sublime courage of Northern laborers ? The whole 
North is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, in- 
telligence, and indomitable independence of Northern laborers. 
Go, sir, go preach insurrection to men like these. 



LXVIL— DISCUSSION OF WEBSTER AND HAYtfE. 

WM. C. JOHNSON. 

It was a conflict, in my apprehension, more sublime than 
the warring of contending elements. It was a conflict of 
mind, whose mind met and subdued mind. The occurrence 



96 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

to which I allude formed a new epoch in the history of this 
nation, and presented a spectacle of the highest sublimity I 
do not use the word "sublimity" in the august sense of the 
bookmen ; of old ocean, when the elements fret its vast bosom 
into fearful terror ; of the grand prairie on fire, which forces 
the heavens to reflect its lurid light, and fills the mind with 
an idea of immensity of flame ; of the pale and blue moun 
tain crag, which lifts its aspiring head to the heavens, as if to 
defy the terror of the lightning and the thunders ; nor of the 
wide and headlong cataract, which precipitates itself from the 
fearful height above to the abyss below, dashes its angry 
waves into foam, and hangs its spray and its rainbow in the 
heavens as a trophy of its awful power and sublimity. I have 
seen all this ; but there is a sublime spectacle which has 
struck me with more peculiar force, and one which reminds 
me more of the influence and power of Daniel Webster's great 
speech on that memorable occasion. It is the confluence of 
the Missouri and the Mississippi, or the silent meeting of the 
Ohio with the Mississippi. There is no awful terror there 
which astonishes reflection ; no dreadful noise that subdues 
the senses ; but you see the meeting of mighty waters ; you 
see a vast river swallowing up, without commotion, vast 
rivers ; you see that great mother of waters flowing on in sul- 
len and silent grandeur, as if it received no aid, as if it were 
unconscious that there were other streams. You are not 
amazed at its breadth, nor its depth, but you are awed at its 
quiet, sublime silence, and power. Your mind is not alarmed 
or astonished, but forced to reflect. It is thrown into a new 
aud endless world of meditation. You behold a stream which 
has flown on from the beginning of the world, and will roll 
on through all time, which defies the control of all human 
power, and is the same, unchanged and unchangeable. Such 
was the moral power of the speech to which I allude — its 
calm and unostentatious power, its moral sublimity, which 
bore down all resistance, and forced i s influence through all 
the channels of human thought. The doctrine of State su- 
premacy had spread from town to town, from county to 
county, and from state to state. It rolled on like mighty 
waters, overleaping their banks from South to North, as each 
aspiring wave strove to overreach its predecessor in the anx- 
ious progress. 

It was then that the reproach of being a Northern man was 
thrown upon Daniel Webster ; he was accused — no matter 



, 



ON THE PLATFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION-. 97 

how wrongfully, he was still accused — with having been an 
accessory of the Hartford Convention, which was charged 
with having had a design of a dissolution of the Union : 
in the same breath he was called a consoladitionist, and a 
federalist, and an opposer of the war. Under such a cloud 
of prejudice he rose in his senate place, and by a mighty ef- 
fort of mind, such as history furnishes but one parallel to, in 
its influence upon a nation, and that the master effort of the 
great Cicero, he dashed back the angry waters to their foun- 
tains, to flow on in future in their usual and well-defined 
courses. It was a victory more glorious than any won on the 
battle-field — a victory without carnage. It was the triumph 
of intellect controlling intellect, and staying physical hostil- 
ities by the moral force of reason and the sublime eloquence 
of wisdom. 



LXVIIL— ON THE PLATFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Finally, the honorable member declares that he shall now 
march off, under the banner of State Rights ! March off 
from whom ? March off from what ? We have been con- 
tending for great principles. We have been struggling to 
maintain the liberty, and to restore the prosperity of the coun- 
try ; we have made these struggles here, in the national coun- 
cils, with the old flag, the true American flag, the Eagle, and 
the Stars and Stripes, waving over the chamber in which we 
sit. He now tells us, however, that he marches off under 
the State Eights banner ! Let him go. I remain. I am 
where I ever have been, and ever mean to be. Here, stand- 
ing on the platform of the general Constitution — a platform 
broad enough, and firm enough, to uphold every interest of 
the whole country — I shall ever be found. Intrusted with 
some part in the administration of that Constitution,' I intend 
to act in its spirit, and in the spirit of those who formed it. 
Yes, sir, I would act as if our fathers, who formed it for us, 
and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on us — as if I 
could see their venerable forms bending down to behold us, 
from the abodes above. I would act, too, sir, as if that long 
line of posterity were also viewing us, whose eye is heiouJ> 
ter to scrutinize our conduct. 



98 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Standing thus, as in the full gaze of our ancestors, and our 
posterity, having received this inheritance from the former, to 
transmit it to the latter, and feeling that if I am born for any 
good, in my day and generation, it is for the good of the 
whole country, no local policy, or local feeling, no temporary 
impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold on the Con- 
stitution and the Union. I move off, under no banner not 
known to the whole American people, and to their Constitu 
tion and laws. No, sir, these walls, these columns 

" Fly 
From their firm base as soon as I." 

I came into public life, sir, in the service of the United 
States. On that broad altar my earliest, and all my public 
vows, have been made. I propose to serve no other master. 
So far as depends on ary agency of mine, they shall continue 
United States ; united in interest and in affection ; united in 
everything in regard to which the Constitution has decreed 
their Union ; united in war, for the common defence, the 
common renown and the common glory ; and united, com- 
pacted, knit firmly together in peace, for the common pros- 
perity and happiness of ourselves and our children. 



LXIX — IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICAN SEAMEN. 

HENRY CLAY. 

Sir, government has done too much in granting those pa- 
per protections. I can never think of them without being 
shocked. They resemble the passes which the master grants 
to his negro slave — " Let the bearer, Mungo, pass and repass 
without molestation." What do they imply ? That Great 
Britain has a right to seize all who are not provided with 
them. From their very nature, they must be liable to abuse 
on both sides. If Great Britain desires a mark, by which she 
can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark. 
The colors that float from his mast-head should be the cre- 
dentials of our seamen. There is no safety for us, and the 
gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule, that all who sail 
tidier the flag (not being enemies) are protected by the flag. 
It is impossible that this country should ever abandon tho 



THE ISSUE. 99 

gallant tars, who have won for us such splendid trophies. 
Let me suppose that the genius of Columbia should visit one 
of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile 
him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She would say- 
to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side : 
"Great Britain intends you no harm; she did not mean to 
impress you, but one of her own subjects ; having taken you 
by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to prevail upon her, 
by peaceable means, to release you ; but I cannot, my son, 
fight for you." Tf he did not consider this mere mockery, 
the poor tar would address her judgment, and say : " You 
owe me, my country, protection : I owe you, in return, obe- 
dience. I am no British subject ; I am a native of old Mas- 
sachusetts, where lived my aged father, my wife, my children. 
I have faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do 
yours ?" Appealing to her passions he would continue : "I 
lost this eye in fighting under Truxton, with the Insurgente ; 
I got this scar before Tripoli ; I broke this leg on board the 
Const tution, when the (xuerriere struck." 

I will not imagine the dreadful catastrophe to which he 
would be driven by an abandonment of him to his oppressor. 
It will not be, it cannot be, that his country will refuse him 
protection. 



LXX.— THE ISSUE. 

ANONYMOUS. 

Here is the issue, clear as daylight. How will it be de- 
cided ? Here is the end. Either the present Congress, at 
the next session, will abolish this law, or confirm it. In the 
former case, the South will be compelled to secede from the 
Union. She is driven into a corner where there is no escape. 
She knows it — she feels it — she declares it, and she will do 
it — she has no other course. Men of the North, will you sus- 
tain the course of your representatives in the last session of 
Congress ? If you will, the Union is safe ; if not, it is gone ; 
and, be it remembered, now the issue is with you, and on 
y T our heads will fall the consequences. And when the final 
question is decided, and the Union is broken up, what will be 
the upshot of it on you, your families, your interests ? Stop 
long enough to ask yourselves this question. The South will 



100 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

not war upon you — she will leave you. And where are your 
markets, your manufactures, your commerce, your agricul- 
ture, your rents, your investments, your domestic relations ? 
Have you measured the extent of the evil to yourselves and 
your children? Above all, have you calculated the conse- 
quences to mankind of the final failure of the only successful 
attempt ever, made on earth to establish on a permanent basis 
the fair fabric of republican institutions ? Why did you send 
up your lamentations over the fall of Hungarian freedom, or 
the destruction of the republic of Rome ? And yet, what 
was all this compared with the final extinction of the repub- 
lic of Washington ? Look at the portraits of your ancestors, 
and answer the question. 



LXXL— THE MARRIAGE BROKEN OFF. 

THOMAS H. BENTON. 

When his committee was formed, and himself safely in- 
stalled at the head of it, conqueror and pacificator, the Sen- 
ator appeared to be the happiest of mankind. We all re- 
member that figure. It seemed to ache with pleasure. It 
was too great for continence. It burst forth. In the fulness 
of his joy, and the overflowing of his heart, he entered upon 
that series of congratulations which seemed to me to be rather 
premature, and in disregard of the sage maxim, which ad- 
monishes the traveller never to hal-loo till he is out of the 
woods. I thought so then. I was forcibly reminded of it on 
Saturday last, when I saw that Senator, after a vain effort to 
compose his friends, and even reminding them of what they 
were " threatened" with this day — inuendo, this poor speech 
of mine — gather up his beaver and quit the chamber, in a 
way that seemed to say, " the Lord have mercy on you all, 
for I have done with you !" But the Senator was happy 
that night — supremely so. All his plans had succeeded — 
committee of thirteen appointed — he himself its chairman — 
all power put into their hands — their own hands untied, and 
the hands of the Senate tied — and the parties just ready to 
be bound together, forever. It was an ecstatic moment for 
the Senator, something like that of the heroic Pirithous when 
he surveyed the preparations for the nuptial feast — saw the 



America's influence abroad. 101 

company all present, the lapithae on couches, the centaurs on 
their haunches — heard the lo In/men beginning to resound, 
and saw the beauteous H' : ppodami, about as beauteous I sup- 
pose as California, come " glittering like a star," and take 
her stand on his left hand. It was a happy moment for 
Pirithous, and in the fulness of his feelings he might have 
given vent to his joy, congratulations to all the company 
present, to all the lapithsB and to all the centaurs, to all man- 
kind, and to all horsekiud, on the auspicious event. But, oh : 
the deceitfulness of human felicity ! In an instant the scene 
was changed ! the feast a fljrht — the wedding festival a mor- 
tal combat — the table itself supplying the implements of 
war ! 

a At first a medley flight 
Of bowls and jars supply the fight : 
Once implements of feasts, but now of fate." 

You know how it ended The fight broke up the feast. The 
wedding was postponed. And so may it be with this at- 
tempted conjunction of California with the many ill-suited 
spouses which the committee of thirteen have provided for 
her. 



LXXII.— AMERICA'S INFLUENCE ABROAD. 

J. m'dowell. 

But the range and horrors of such a catastrophe do not 
terminate with ourselves — they extend also to other lands 
than our own, whose hopes, interests and freedom are deeply 
complicated with ours. Indeed, our whole position as a 
people, the unparalleled physical and moral capabilities into 
which we have heen wrought up for our own welfare and 
for auspicious action upon the welfare of others, is, itself, 
hardly less than a miracle in human story ; and in the whole 
course of that story has never, in any other case, been real- 
ized so providentially or responsibly before. From the Em- 
pire of Nebuchadnezzar to that of Napoleon, how immense 
the distance, how stupendous the revolutions that have 
intervened, how intense the fiery contests which have burned 
over continents and ages, changing their theatre and their 
instruments, and leaving upon the whole surface of the globe 



102 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

scarce a spot unstained by their desolating and bloody track ; 
and yet no national offspring has sprung from them all so 
fitted as our own United America, to redeem for the world 
the agonies they have cost it. 

Cast off, then, your national bonds, rearrange the sepa- 
rated States into any new combinations that you please, vio 
lently or peaceably, and your vast strength of influence and 
of power, foreign and domestic, is gone ; your lofty mission 
of deliverance and liberty to the nations is gone ; the example, 
which fell, like the shadow of St. Peter, with healing and 
hope upon the despairing and the diseased, is gone ; that 
master spirit which was bringing the whole world into com- 
munion with itself, rousing and regenerating its millions, and 
bearing all things onward for good by the resistless energy 
and might of its own beneficent and profound progression — 
that spirit, too, will be gone. 

State after State wi]l sink under conflicts with each other, 
and all will be swayed by the law of the sword, until some 
American Maximin, or American Alexander, conquering all, 
shall again consolidate all, and stamp his foot upon the bold 
and the free heart, which throbs at this hour with so strong a 
sense of human liberty, and so rich a hope of renovating the 
governments and people of the world. 



LXXIIL— THE EXTENT OF THE UNION. 

J. W. HOUSTON. 

I have adverted, Mr. Chairman, to the rapid growth and 
expansion of our country. What has it been, sir ? Contem- 
plate its feeble, gloomy, and doubtful condition, when only a 
few years ago it was struggling for a national existence, thir- 
teen poor and sparsely settled colonies occupying a narrow 
strip of country along the eastern seaboard ; and now turn, 
sir, and behold yon morning sun, which, rising from the broad 
bosom of the Atlantic, rolls over thirty prosperous and popu- 
lous States — over many a rich and gorgeous city, majestic 
river, cloud-capped mountain, and many a wide and green 
and glorious plain, until he sinks at last along the margin of 
the wes f ern ocean to his golden bed — spanning in his flight a 
present empire of more than three thousand miles in extent, 



CLAY AND WEBSTER. 103 

and stretching, in a transverse direction, from the line of the 
lakes on the north to almost the line of the tropics on the 
south. Where, sir, will you find either in ancient or modern 
times, a kingdom or a power of equal magnificence and equal 
extent, when you take into consideration the wealth and 
variety of its productions, the diversity of its climate and 
resources, the fertility of its soil, and all that can make a 
nation truly great and truly powerful? It is estimated by 
the historian of the Decline and Fall, that the Roman Em- 
pire, in the palmiest days of her Antonines, when her imperial 
eagles spread in peaceful triumph from the Pillars of Hercules 
to the banks of the Euphrates, and when she claimed to be 
the sole mistress of the known and habitable world, only em- 
braced a territorial area of about one million six hundred 
thousand square miles — less than one half the present terri- 
tory of the United States, which is now computed to contain 
three millions three hundred thousand square miles. Sir, 
when I contemplate this vast domain, this picture of more 
than imperial grandeur, and consider what this great Repub- 
lic now is, and what it is destined to be, if this glorious Union 
is preserved, and then reflect that 1 am a citizen, not of the 
State of Delaware alone, not of New York, not of Massa- 
chusetts, not of Mississippi, not of Georgia merely, but of this 
whole country, in all its broad and glorious extent, I feel that 
I can realize a greater boast than the Roman of old, and am 
proud to know that " I, too, am an American citizen." 



LXXIV.— CIAY AXD WEBSTER. 

MEREDITH P. GENTRY. 

When the sectional controversy growing out of the acqui- 
sition of territory from Mexico began to assume a portentous 
and alarming aspect, Mr. Clay had withdrawn himself from 
the public cares, to spend the evening of his illustrious life in 
retirement. But the roar of civil discord and the muttering 
thunders of disunion penetrated the quiet shades of Ashland, 
and roused him from his repose as the sound of the trumpet 
rouses the war-horse. Ashland lost its charms. Retirement 
and quiet and repose could no longer solace the veteran 
statesman His country was in dangor — the Union was 



104 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

menaced — the fair fabric of freedom, erected by sages and 
patriots, was threatened with demolition. He accepted a 
commission from Kentucky to reappear upon the theatre of 
public affairs, and hastened to the capitol. Again he rises in 
the Senate chamber, the scene of so many former triumphs. 
That clarion voice, which so often before "enchained the 
listening Senate," again rings through its chambers and 
resounds through the country, striking terror to the hearts of 
conspirators, and imparting confidence, courage, and hope, to 
desponding patriots everywhere. How eloquently and per- 
suasively he pleads for harmony and conciliation, and that 
spirit of mutual concession and compromise in which the 
Union was ibrmed, and which alone can preserve it. With 
what power does he portray the advantages of the Union and 
the inappreciable evils that will follow its dissolution. How 
terrible his denunciations of those who conspire against it ! 
Disunion stands rebuked and abashed in his presence, and 
cowers under his patriotic indignation. 

Towering in intellectual proportions above other men, as 
Atlas towers above the mole-hilJs at its base, Mr. Webster 
rises to follow in the debate. He is a Northern man. He is 
a Senator from Massachusetts, and the favorite and most 
honored citizen of that State. What course will he take ? 
What will he say ? Will he forfeit his position in Massa- 
chusetts and in the Northern States generally ? Dare he 
brave the thunders of indignation which would burst upon 
him ? He speaks — and speaks as no man never before spoke 
— not for the North or the South, the East or the West, but 
for the country, the whole country, and nothing but the 
country — for the Union, and the liberty and happiness which 
it secures. Reckless of consequences to himself, he gave to 
his country, what was not meant for a state or a section — his 
powerful intellect and matchless oratory, and all the influence 
which these high gifts enabled him to wield. 

Webster, and Clay ! — I refer to them with the most 
exulting pride. I am proud of them as American patriots, 
orators and statesmen. How gloriously they have borne 
themselves ! If they were both to die to-day, they have 
achieved enough for fame. History would eternize their 
patriotic deeds, and remote ages would hail them great and 
glorious. 



GLORY OF ARMS. 105 

LXXV.— GLORY OF ARMS. 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

Whatever may be the judgment of poets, of moralists, )<; 
satirists, or even of soldiers, it is certain that the glor^ o 
arms still exercises no mean influence over the minds of men. 
The art of war, which has been happily termed by a French 
divine, the baleful art by which men learn to exterminate 
one another, is yet held, even among Christians, to be an 
honorable pursuit ; and the animal courage, which it stimu- 
lates and develops, is prized as a transcendent virtue. It 
will be for another age, and a higher civilization, to appre- 
ciate the more exalted character of the art of benevolence — 
the art of extending happiness and all good influences, by 
word or deed, to the largest number of mankind, — which, in 
blessed contrast with the misery, the degradation, the wicked- 
ness of war, shall shine resplendent the true grandeur of 
peace. All then will be willing to join with the early poet 
in saying at least : — 

" Though louder fame attend the martial rage, 
'Tis greater glory to reform the age." 

Then shall the soul thrill with a nobler heroism than that of 
battle. Peaceful industry, with untold multitudes of cheer- 
ful and beneficent laborers, shall be its gladsome token. 
Literature, full of sympathy and comfort for the heart of man, 
shall appear in garments of purer glory than she has yet 
assumed. Science shall extend the bounds of knowledge and 
power, adding unimaginable strength to the hands of men, 
opening innumerable resources in the earth, and revealing 
new secrets and harmonies in the skies. Art, elevated and 
refined, shall lavish fresh streams of beauty and grace. 
Charity, in streams of milk and honey, shall diffuse itself 
among all the habitations of the world. Does any one ask 
for the signs of this approaching era ? 

The increasing beneficence and intelligence of our own 
day, the broad-spread sympathy with human suffering, the 
widening thoughts of men, the longings of the heart for a 
higher condition on earth, the unfulfilled promises of Chris- 
tian Progress, are the auspicious auguries of this Happy 
Future. As early voyagers over untried realms of waste, 
we have already observed the signs of land. The green 



106 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

twig and fresh red berry have floated by our bark ; the 
odors of the shore fan our faces ; nay, we may seem to descry 
the distant gleam of light, and hear from the more earnest 
observers, as Columbus heard, after midnight, from the mast- 
head of the Pinta, the joyful cry of Land! Land! and lo ! 
a new world broke upon his early morning gaze. 



LXXVL— ON THE REMOVAL OF WASHINGTON'S REMAINS. 

A. S. CLAYTON. 

Physical monuments perish, but it is the grand moral as- 
sociation that perpetuates events to the latest age, and occa- 
sions them to endure, with increasing effect, through all fu- 
ture time. Among these great moral recollections associated 
with the character of Washington, is the place of his birth 
and the home of his childhood. What country so fitted for 
his sepulchre as Virginia, the State that gave him being ? — 
that State, so distinguished for every noble daring, and where 
Washington commenced and ended his military career — a 
career so signally famed for its masterly valor at the very 
outset, and the crowning victory of York at its close. But, 
sir, when you add to this, the recollection of that spot, in 
his native State — the one above all others, which he selected 
for his home — where he spent a long life — to which every 
day in that long life was devoted in works of taste, and 
around which he had thrown his great mind in the most im- 
perishable evidences of genius and industry — that had at- 
tracted the visits of thousands from every part of the world, 
and those, too, of the most distinguished foreigners, at the 
head of whom stands the immortal La Fayette — which, in 
life, was open to every stranger, the curious as well as the 
grateful, and since his death has become the shrine of the 
patriot's pilgrimage — what site on earth so suited for a monu- 
ment as that, thus consecrated by such undying recollections ? 
This, then, should be the grave of Washington. But, sir, 
there is another strong consideration why these remains should 
not be disturbed. It was the last request recorded in his 
will, that there he should rest, and that no pomp or show at- 
tend his funeral, nor splendid monument mark his grave. 
This was truly in character with his republican simplicity. 



ON THE REVOLUTIONARY PENSION BILL. 107 

And when it is remembered that his unrivalled fame is far 
above the reach of artificial glories to adorn, and beyond all 
the efforts of marble structures and towering edifices to per- 
petuate, it is better secured, and more illustriously commemo- 
rated in the unostentatious manner in which, at Mount Yer- 
non, his remains are entombed, than it would be, if they 
were deposited under the gaudy dome of the capitol, where, 
torn from the shade of his consort, they would become a 
mere spectacle for the "gaze of the idler," and where, I 
would add, all reverence for them would be lost in the same 
reckless levity that is witnessed every day at the pictures in 
the rotunda. The immeasurable distance between the great- 
ness of his life and the simplicity of his death, and burial, 
forms of itself a monument of moral grandeur, that utterly 
contemns all the splendors of art. 



LXXYIL— ON THE REVOLUTIONARY PENSION BILL. 

W. R. DAVIS. 

Sir, the passage of this bill will be a signal, the sounding 
of a reveille, that will wake up from the slumber of the 
grave all the dead militia of the land. Not harmless ghosts 
and spectres, but substantial pensioners, tax receivers, and 
consumers of the substance of the people. I believe, how- 
ever, I might be induced to vote for this bill, if it would 
have power and virtue to resurrect the blessed patriots who 
have gone before us ; if it would arouse from their slumbers 
the real and true men who repose on the sides of Breed's 
hill, on the plains of Trenton and Princeton, on the banks of 
the Brandywine ; of those who sleep on the gory but hal- 
lowed spots that scar the bosoms of the Southern States ; of 
those who rest beneath the green sod of Yorktown, Guilford, 
King's Mountain, Cowpens, Stouo, and Eutaw ; if it wouJd 
bring to life and light " the buried warlike and the wise,'' 
and give back to us, at this dread crisis, their counsels, ad- 
vice, example, and countenance, to warm, animate, and 
cheer our country's wintry state ! Yes, sir, I would give it 
my support, if it would cause the great Washington to burst 
the cerements which swathe him, and enable him to partici- 
pate in the counsels of this day ; if it would call to your aid 



108 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

the gallant Greene, the wise and patriotic Hancock, the 
Adamses, Shermans, Pinckneys, and all that host of worthies ; 
if it would resuscitate that brotherly feeling which once con- 
nected and made invincible the old thirteen States ; which 
blazed with radiance the path of honor and virtue they trod 
together, and gave to history one bright page of spotless de- 
votion to human liberty. 

What would such patriots feel and say, at the present 
state of the country ? Would not Washington again warn 
you against sectional legislation ? And what might we not 
expect from the heroic Greene — from him, '' around the 
Turning edges of whose shining buckler the whole chivalry 
of the South delighted to rally ?" From one so Joved and 
cherished in life, so mourned in death by the whole South ? — 
from one, who chose to live and die on fields dear to him, to 
his and American glory ? — from one intc whose lap she 
poured her rich treasures ? He would tell you, for well he 
knew, that the Hugonots of Carolina, like the Pilgrims of 
Plymouth rock, were a liberty-loving, but not a factious or 
seditious people. What, too, would the old Maryland line 
say to the charge of disaffection and want of patriotism made 
against us by the selfish and interested ? Would the How- 
ards and Campbells of that day give the charge a moment's 
credence ? Would they not remember when our banners 
floated, and our arms were stacked together on the bloody 
but victorious plains of Eutaw ? 



LXX VIII.— THE MAYFLOWER. 

EDWARD EVERETT 

Methinks, I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous 
vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the 
prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown 
sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the 
uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks 
and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but 
brings them not the sight of the wished- for shore. I see 
them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost 
to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pur- 
suing a circuitous route ; and now, driven in fury before the 



THE MAYFLOWER. 109 

raging tempest, in their scarcely sea- worthy vessel. The 
awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The 
laboring masts seem straining from their base ; the dismal 
sound of the pumps is heard ; the ship leaps, as it were, 
madly from billow to billow ; the ocean breaks, and settles 
with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with 
deadening weight against the staggering vessel. 

I see them escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but 
desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' 
passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, weak and ex- 
hausted from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, 
depending on the charity of their ship-master for a draught 
of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, with- 
out shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes. 

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any prin- 
ciple of human probability, what shall be the fate of this 
handful of adventurers ? Tell me, man of military science, 
in how many months they were ail swept off by the thirty 
savage tribes enumerated within the boundaries of New Eng- 
land ? Tell me, politician how long did this shadow of a 
colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not 
smiled, languish on the distant coast ? Student of history, 
compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, 
the abandoned adventurers of other times, and find the paral- 
lel of this. Was it the winter storm, beating upon the 
houseless heads of women and children ? was it hard labor 
and spare meals ? was it disease ? was it the tomahawk? was 
it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, 
and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recol- 
lections of the loved and left, beyond the sea ? was it some 
or all of them united that hurried this forsaken company to 
their melancholy fate ? And is it possible, that neithe:-. of 
these causes, that all combined, were able to blast this oud 
of hope ! Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, ro 
frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, tl.ere 
has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful. 
a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled so gbr'ous ! 



110 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



LXXIX.— PHILANTHROPY. 

FRANCIS WAYLAID. 

It is not in the field of patriotism alone that deeds have 
been achieved, to which history has awarded the palm of 
moral sublimity. There have lived men, in whom the name 
of patriot has merged in that of philanthropist, who, looking 
with an eye of compassion over the face of the earth, have 
felt for the miseries of our race, and have put forth their 
calm might to wipe off one blot from the marred and stained 
escutcheon of human nature, to strike off one form of suffer- 
ing Irom the catalogue of human war. Such a man was 
Howard. Surveying our world like a spirit of the blessed, he 
beheld the misery of the captive — he heard the groaning of 
the prisoner. His determination was fixed. He resolved, 
single-handed, to gauge and to measure one form of unpitied, 
unheeded wretchedness, and bringing it out to the sunshine 
of public observation, to work its utter extermination. And 
he well knew what this undertaking would cost him. 
He knew what he had to hazard from the infections of dun- 
geons, to endure from the fatigues of inhospitable travel, and 
to brook from the insolence of legalized oppression. Ho knew 
that he was devoting himself to the altar of philanthropy, 
and he willingly devoted himself. He had marked out his 
destiny, and he hasted forward to its accomplishment, with 
an intensity, " which the nature of the human mind forbade 
lo be more, and the character of the individual forbade to be 
less." Thus he commenced a new era in the history of be- 
nevolence. And hence, the name of Howard will be asso- 
ciated with all that is sublime in mercy, until the final 
consummation of all things ! 

Such a man is Clarkson, who, looking abroad, beheld the 
miseries of Africa, and, looking at home, saw his country 
stained with her blood. We have seen him, laying aside 
"^he vestments of the priesthood, consecrate himself to the 
hoh r purpose of rescuing a continent from rapine and mur- 
der, and of erasing this one sin from the book of his nation's 
iniquities. We have seen him and his fellow philanthropists, 
for twenty years, never waver from their purpose. We have 
seen them persevere amidst neglect and obloquy, and con- 
tempt, and persecution, until the cry of the oppressed having 
roused the sensibilities of the nation, the " Island Empress" 



INDEMNITY TO THE NIAGARA SUFFERERS. . Ill 

rose in her might, and said to this foul traffic in human fle?h, 
11 Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." 



LXXX.— INDEMNITY TO THE NIAGARA SUFFERERS. 

WILLIAMS. 

But the gentleman insists that if the government is not 
bound to pay for such losses, we cannot claim to be indepen- 
dent. Sir, I have read to you, from the page of impartial 
history, some of the acts of pillage and cruelty perpetrated by 
the enemy in our Revolutionary war ; were these losses ever 
paid ? No, sir, the old Congress denied the right of the suf- 
ferers to indemnity, and invariably refused to grant any com- 
pensation whatever. Was our country, therefore, not inde- 
pendent ? Yet the gentleman says we must either pay such 
losses ourselves, or compel the enemy to pay them, or we are 
not independent. Sir, we suffered much under the British 
Orders in Council. Was compensation allowed in the treaty 
of Ghent ? We suffered sorely under the Berlin and Milan 
decrees. Has compensation ever, to this day, been allowed 
for these losses ? No, sir ; and it is very questionable if the 
nation will go to war to obtain it. Will the gentleman, 
therefore, maintain that the States are not, at this day, inde- 
pendent ? Sir, the thing is not done by any government, nor 
can the argument be sustained by an appeal to facts. The 
true rule is, that government is bound to obtain such allow- 
ance, and to make such compensation, if it can be done con- 
veniently. But would the gentleman say that, in order to 
get the allowance of one million, the whole nation must be 
plunged into war, at an expense of one hundred millions ? 
In such cases the demand becomes a question of policy. It 
was a maxim (attributed, I believe, to Mr. Adams), at one 
time, in the mouth of every American, "Millions for defence, 
but not a cent for tribute." There is something of honor in 
such questions. What was the language of President Madi- 
son to Cockburn, when he commenced his ravages ? Did the 
President say to him, " Admiral Cockburn, pray forbear ; 
forbear, if you please ; if not, we must pay our citizens for 
the injuries you may inflict ?" No, sir ; he said, " Forbear; 
if not we will retaliate." This, sir, is the only note for such an 



112 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

ear as Cockburn's — the dread of retaliation is the only con- 
sideration which can hold such an enemy in check. 

But, the gentleman relies much on the merits and suffer- 
ings of the inhabitants of the Niagara frontier. Sir, I have 
much regard for those inhabitants, and I am inclined to be- 
lieve much of the representations in their favor, which have 
been given by the gentleman from New York ; but still I 
fee 1 great doubt whether they were suffereis to anything like 
the extent they would have us suppose. I do know that 
many who send us the most heart-rending accounts of their 
calamities, placed themselves voluntarily on the frontier lor 
certain commercial purposes, and I have been very credibly 
informed that the frontier, generally, received more benefit 
than injury from being, to the extent it was, the seat of war 
Sir, those people, many of them, could well afford to have 
their houses burnt, if they received at such a rate, the public 
money, which was then concentrated, and expended with 
the most lavish profusion on that frontier. 



LXXXL— INDEMNITY TO THE NIAGARA SUFFERERS. 

JOSEPH VANCE. 

Let me say to the gentleman, that in Buffalo, he might, 
on one day, have found a family well housed, well clothed, 
surrounded with every comfort of life, who, from its hospital- 
ity in throwing open its doors to the American soldier, was 
the next day houseless and homeless, destitute of all things ; 
if he had chanced, eight months afterwards, to be wandering 
on the flats of the Ohio, he might there see a family scarcely 
covered by a wretched house, in squalid poverty, one day 
shivering with ague, and the next consumed with raging fe- 
ver ; if his compassion should lead him to enter and inquire 
into their situation, he would hear them say, our father lived 
in plenty and comfort, on the Niagara frontier — he saw the 
American soldiery ready to perish — he opened his door to take 
them in — and for that we are here, ruined and in wretched- 
ness. Sir, the sufferings of the French, on their retreat from 
Moscow, present not too strong a picture to convey a just idea 
of what was endured while the whole country on the Lakes 
was converted into one wbe cantonment. Had the gentle- 



SUPPRESSION OF PIRACY*. 113 

man seen an American regiment on that frontier drawn up 
on a frosty morning, and supporting arms while their limbs 
were chilled to the bone, standing, in their cotton dress, in 
snow two and three feet deep ; had he seen these claimants 
opening their houses to receive men in immediate danger of 
perishing (many of them did perish), and afterwards turned 
out of house and home for doing it, he would not, he could 
not, deny that something ought to be done for their relief. 

The gentleman has insinuated, that the inhabitants of the 
frontier are actuated wholly by a principle of selfishness ; that, 
unless stimulated by a sense of interest, they will do nothing 
in their own defence, and will surrender up their property an 
easy prey to the enemy. But, sir, that gentleman surely did 
not consider the feelings of the American people when he ad- 
vanced such a sentiment. If nothing had operated on their 
minds but selfishness, the army of the frontier could not 
have been kept together a single day. No, sir, not a single 
day. There were our soldiers, lying naked and perishing on 
one bank of the Niagara river, while, directly opposite, they 
could see the British sentry parading backward and forward 
in a good comfortable watchcoat, and hear him cry out, cheer- 
fully, "all's well." They had only to cross en masse to the 
British side, to exchange a lodging on the ground, in their 
cotton that admitted the rain, and, when the rain was over, 
froze upon their bodies, for warm clothing and good quarters. 
Had selfishness been the ruling principle, where would have 
been your militia ? Where would have been your regulars ? 
— at their own homes, or over the British lines ! 



LXXXIL— SUPPRESSION OF PIRACY. 

P. P. BARBOUR. 

Sir, I think the strength of our measures may be ascribed 
to the imbecility of Spain. That weakness has produced the 
necessity of adopting the powerful measures in question. 
But, if it is said that they have been adopted with the inten- 
tion of taking advantage of the weakness of Spain, I answer, 
blessed be God, the United States have nothing to wish, ana 
nothing to fear. We are prepared to rejoice with our fortu- 
nate neighbors: and. if they are unfortunate, to pity theTi. 



114 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Surely if, in the tide of time, any nation ever existed, calling 
for the compassion of mankind, that nation is Spain. . L 
how she is degraded — how she is sunk — a foreign bayonet 
supports a tottering throne, whilst her imbecile monarch is 
watching, with a jealous eye, the progress of everything that 
is patriotic or worthy. His counsels, in his native country, 
have been more disastrous than the march of a desolating 
conqueror. His decrees are dictated by fear, cruelty, and 
despotism, and written in blood — at their approach, whatever 
is worthy, retires, as from the bond of death — in their van, 
amazement and flight; but behind, sorrow and solitude. In 
fine, the annals of Spain are 1 ke the Prophet's scroll, which 
was written within and without, and there was written lam- 
entation, and mourning, and woe. Were it possible for 
America to desert her high career, to add an additional drug 
to the cup which Spain has been doomed to drink, we might 
well fear that we should provoke the vengeance of that God 
whose kind Providence has enabled us to march, with a 
giant's stride, to the fulfilment of our happy destinies, and 
whose favor is to be conciliated only by deeds of moderation 
and justice. 

These robbers are more ferocious than the Algerine cor- 
sairs ; they spare neither age nor sex, but all fall beneath 
their murderous hands. Out of twelve vessels, not one was 
suffered to survive ! Can the records of any age produce any- 
thing more monstrous or barbarous than this ? These are 
the powerful motives which have induced us to recommend 
the adoption of such decisive measures ; it is to save our prop- 
erty from plunder, our citizens from being murdered, and 
our flag from being insulted, and that it may become an in- 
violable safeguard over whatever subject or whatsoever sea it 
may wave. 



LXXXIIL— COMMUNICATION WITH MEXICO IN 1825. 

THOMAS H. BENTON. 

The use of an unmolested passage between Mexico and the 
United States, is as necessary in a political, as in a commer- 
cial point of view. They are neighboring powers, inhabi- 
tants of the same continent, their territories are contiguous, 
and their settlements approximating to each other. They 



COMMUNICATION WITH MEXICO IN 1825. 1 1 -"S 

are the two chief powers of the New World, and stand at 
the head of that cordon of Republics, which, stretching from 
pole to pole, across the two Americas, are destined to make 
the last stand in defence of human liberty. They have the 
legitimates of Europe in front, and the autocrat of all the 
Russias in the rear. They are republican, and Republics 
have become " the abhorred thing," the existence of which 
is not to be tolerated in the land. The time was, Mr. Presi- 
dent, when the kingdom and the republic could exist to- 
gether ; when the Swiss, and the Dutch, and the Venetian 
republics, were the friends and allies of kings and emperors. 
But that day has gone by. The time has come when the 
monarch and the republican can no longer breathe the same 
atmosphere. A speck of republicanism above the political 
horizon, now throws all Europe into commotion. Telegraphs 
play, couriers fly, armies move, the Cossacks of the Don and 
of the Ukraine couch their lances, kings and emperors vault 
into their saddles ; a million of bayonets turn their remorse- 
less points against the portentous sign ! We Americans 
(I use the word in its broadest sense), we Americans see and 
hear all this, yet we remain strangers to each other, form no 
associations, and our communications are as tardy and as 
difficult as they are between the inhabitants of Africa and of 
Asia. Even with Mexico, our nearest neighbor, we have no 
communication, except by a sea voyage., through a boisterous 
gulf, infested with pirates. The bill before you is intended 
to correct a part of this evil ; it will make " straight the 
way" between the United States and Mexico ; it will open 
an easy channel of communication between them ; not for 
merchandise only, but for thoughts and ideas ; for books and 
for newspapers, and for every description of travellers. It 
will bring together the two nations whose power and whose 
positions, make them responsible to the w r oiid for the preser- 
vation of the Republican system. And shall a measure >f 
such moment be defeated by a parcel of miserable barbarians. 
Arabs of the desert, incapable of appreciating our policy, and 
placing a higher value upon the gun of a murdered hunter, 
than upon "he preservation of all the republics in the world i 



>!*) THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

LXXXIV.— LIBERTY IN SOUTH AMERICA. 

JOHN RANDOLPH'. 

I will not detain the Senate further than to suggest, that I 
have heard that this great man — I have no doubt that he 
was a great man — a good man — there are a great many Such 
great and good men— La Fayette was one of them — at the 
commencement of the French Revolution — would not hear of 
any parley at all with what they considered the imprescrip- 
tible rights of men ; they played the whole game, they would 
not hear of qualification, and we see what this desperate 
game has eventuated in — extremes always beget one another. 
This General Bolivar, called the South American Washing- 
tori — as every man nowadays, who has commanded a pla- 
toon, is a Caesar or a Hannibal, a Eumenes or Sertorius at 
least — so he is the South American Washington. I remem- 
ber, sir, that when the old Earl of Bedford was condoled 
with by a hypocrite, who wished in fact to wound his feel- 
ings, on the murder of his son Lord Russell, he indignantly 
replied that he would not exchange his dead son for the 
living son of any man on earth. So I, Mr. President, would 
not give our dead Washington for any living Washington, or 
any Washington that is likely to live in your time or in 
mine ; whatever may be the blessings reserved for mankind 
in the womb of time. I do know, the world knows, that the 
principle of the American Revolution, and the principle that 
is now at work in the peninsula of South America and in 
Guatemala and New Spain, are principles as opposite as light 
and darkness — principles as opposite as a manly ana" rational 
liberty is opposed to the frantic orgies of the French Baccha- 
nals of the Revolution, as opposite as a manly and rational 
piety is opposed to that politico-religious fanaticism, which, I 
am sorry to see, is not at work only in the peninsula of South 
America and New Spain, but has pervaded, or is pervading, 
all this country, and has insinuated itself wherever it can, to 
the disturbance of the public peace, the loosening of the key- 
stone of this Constitution, and the undermining die foundation 
on which the arch of our Union rests. No, sir, th«y are as 
different as light and darkness — as common sense and -prac- 
tice differ from the visionary theories of moon-struck (unatics 



LAST CHARGE OF NEY. 11* 



LXXXV.— LAST CHARGE OF NEY. 

J. T. HEADIET. 

The whole continental struggle exhibited no sublimer spec- 
tacle than this last effort of Napoleon to save his sinking em- 
pire. Europe had been put upon the plains of Waterloo to 
be battled for. The greatest military energy and skill the 
world possessed had been tasked to the utmost during the day. 
Thrones were tottering on the ensanguined field, and the 
shadows of fugitive kings flitted through the smoke cf battle. 
Bonaparte's star trembled in the zenith — now blazing out in 
its ancient splendor, now suddenly paling before his anxious 
eye. At length, when the Prussians appeared on the field, 
he resolved to stake Europe on one bold throw. He commit- 
ted himself and France to Ney, and saw his empire rest on a 
single chance. 

Ney felt the pressure of th° immense responsibility on his 
brave heart, and resolved not to prove unworthy of the great 
trust committed to his care. Nothing could be more impos- 
ing than the movement of that grand column to the assault. 
That guard had never yet recoiled before a human foe, and 
the allied forces beheld with awe its firm and terrible ad- 
vance to the final charge. For a moment the batteries 
stopped playing, and the firing ceased along the British lines, 
as without the beating of a drum, or the blast of a bugle, to 
cheer their steady courage, they moved in dead silence over 
the plain. The next moment the artillery opened, and the 
head of that gallant column seemed to sink into the earth. 
Rank after rank went down, yet they neither stopped nor 
faltered. Dissolving squadrons, and whole battalions disap- 
pearing one after another in the destructive fire, affected not 
their steady courage. The ranks closed up as before, and 
each treading over his fallen comrade, pre?sed firmly on. 
The horse which Ney rode fell under him, and he had scarce- 
ly mounted another before it also sunk to the earth. Again 
and again did that unflinching man feel his steed sink down, 
till five had been shot under him. Then, with his uniform 
riddled with bullets, and his face singed and blackened with 
powder, he marched on foot with drawn sabre, at the head 
of his men. In vain did the arlillery hurl its storm of fire 
and lead into that living mass. Up to the very muzzles they 
pressed, and driving the artillerymen from their own pieces, 



118 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

pushed on through the English lines. But at that moment a 
file of soldiers who had lain flat on the ground, behind a low- 
ridge of earth, suddenly rose and poured a volley in their 
very faces. Another and another followed till one broad 
sheet of flame rolled on their bosoms, and in such a fierce 
?rd unexpected flow, that human courage could not with- 
stand it. They reeled, shook, staggered back, then turned 
and fled. Ney was borne back in the refluent tide, and hur- 
ried over the held. But for the crowd of fugitives that forced 
him on, he would have stood alone, and fallen on his foot- 
steps. As it was, disdaining to fly, though the whole army 
was flying, he formed his men into two immense squares, and 
endeavored to stem the terrific current, and would have done 
so, had it not been for the thirty thousand fresh Prussians 
that pressed on his exhausted ranks. For a long time these 
squares stood and let the artillery plough through them But 
the fate of Napoleon was writ, and though Ney doubtless did 
what no other man in the army could have done, the decree 
could not be reversed. The star that had blazed so brightly 
over the world, went down in blood, and the " bravest of the 
brave" had fought his last battle. It was worthy of his 
great name, and the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, 
with him at their head, will be pointed to by remotest gene- 
rations with a shudder. 



LXXXVI.— DEFENCE OF POETS. 

CALEB LYON. 

It has been truly said by one who had studied the world 
a: id drank deeply at the fountains of human knowledge, 
" Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who 
makes her laws." All national lyrics are illustrations of the 
deep-seated veneration that poetry wedded to music awakes 
in the souls of mankind. The gentleman seems to have for- 
gotten that David, the man after God's own heart, was a 
poet, and his psalms rise with grateful odor on every Sab- 
bath, from a million of shrines in thanksgiving throughout 
Christian lands ; that Solomon was a poet, whose competi- 
tions are models of beauty, and whose proverbs are axioms of 
wisdom. Homer was a poet, and his Iliad, composed fiv© 



THE MILITIA GENERAL AND HIS FORCES. 119 

hundred years before the histories of Herodotus were written, 
contributed largely to mould the public mind of Greece. Eu- 
ripides was a poet, and his glorious works shed an imperisha- 
ble halo over his once happy and beautiful, but now fallen 
and desolate country. Virgil was a poet, the immortalizer 
of rural life ; and Hesperides, Tempe's Valley, and Arcadia 
linger with those who read him. And Shakspeare. whose 
works — a bible of the mind — are an unfailing source of human 
knowledge. In the words of Jonson, "He was not for a 
day, but for all time." 

Poets have ever been the great civilizers of mankind. 
Poets have ever been the pioneers in human freedom. To 
prince and peasant, in cottage and hall, their songs have 
brought social happiness or sweetest consolation. As memo- 
rials of the past, venerated ; as prophecies of the future, 
revered ; they count the tears, they tell the sorrows, they 
number the joys, they cherish the remembrances, and they 
soothe the passions of the great brotherhood of the world. 
They breathe the matins over our cradles, the Te Deums of 
our manhood, and the vespers of our graves. Where song 
sleeps, patriotism fades away, nationality declines ; but where 
it wakes, like the strains of Memnon of old. it tells of the sun- 
rise of a nation's glory. 



LXXXVII— THE MILITIA GEXERAL AND HIS FORCES. 

THOMAS CORWIN. 

Now the gentleman, being a militia general, as he has 
told us, his brother officers, in that simple statement has re- 
vealed the glorious history of toils, privations, sacrifices, and 
bloody scenes through which we know, from experience and 
observation, a militia officer in time of peace is sure to pass. 
"We all, in fancy, now see the gentleman in that most danger- 
ous and glorious event in the life of a militia general on the 
peace establishment — a parade-day ! — The day, for which 
all the other days of his life seem to have been made. We 
can see the troops in motion ; umbrellas, hoe and axe handles, 
and other deadly implements of war, overshadowing all the 
field, when lo ! the leader of the host approaches, 

" Far off his coming shines ;" 



120 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

his plume, white, after the fashion of the great Bourbon, is 
of ample length, and reads its doleful history in the bereaved 
necks and bosoms of forty neighboring hen-roosts! Like the 
great Suwarow, he seems somewhat careless in forms and 
points of dress ; hence his epaulettes may be on his shoulders, 
back or sides, but still gleaming, gloriously gleaming in the 
sun. M unted he is, too, let it not be forgotten. Need I 
describe to the colonels and generals of this honorable house, 
the steed which heroes bestride on such occasions ? No, I 
see the memory of other days is with you. You see before 
you the gentleman mounted on his crop-eared, bushy- 
tailed mare, the singular obliquity of whose hind limbs 
is described by that most expressive phrase, "sickle hams" 
— her height just fourteen hands, " all told ;" yes, sir, 
there you see his " steed that laughs at the shaking of 
the spear ;" that is, his " war-horse whose neck is clothed 
with thunder." We have glowing descriptions in history 
of Alexander the Great and his war-horse Bucephalus, at 
the head of the invincible Macedonian phalanx, but, sir, 
such are the improvements of modern times, that every one 
must see that our militia general, with his crop-eared mare, 
with bushy tail and sickle hams, would literally frighten off 
the battle-field an hundred Alexanders. But, sir, to the his- 
tory of the parade-day. The general thus mounted and 
equipped is in the field, and ready for action. On the eve of 
some desperate enterprise, such as giving orders to shoulder 
arms, it may be, there occurs a crisis, one of the accidents of 
war which no sagacity could foresee or prevent. A cloud 
rises and passes over the scene ! Here an occasion occurs 
for the display of that greatest of all traits in the character 
of a commander, the tact which enables him to seize upon 
and turn to good account events unlooked for, as they arise. 
Now for the caution wherewith the Roman Fabius foiled the 
skill and courage of Hannibal. A retreat is ordered, and 
troops and general, in a twinkling, are found safely bivouack- 
ed in a neighboring grocery ! But even here the general still 
has room for the exhibition of heroic deeds. Hot from the 
field, and chafed with the untoward events of the day, your 
general unsheathes his trenchant blade, eighteen inches in 
length, as you will well remember, and with an energy and 
remorseless fury he slices the water-melons that lie in heaps 
around him, and shares them with his surviving friends. 
Other of the sinews of war are not wanting here. Whiskey, 



WHO IS INDEPENDENT? 121 

that great leveller of modern times, is here also, and the 
shells of the water-melons are filled to the brim. Here again, 
is shown how the extremes of barbarism and civilization 
meet. As the Scandinavian heroes of old, after the fatigues 
of war, drank wine from the skulls of their slaughtered ene- 
mies, in Odin's Halls, so now our militia general and his 
forces, from the skulls of melons thus vanquished, in copious 
draughts of whiskey assuage the heroic fire of their souls, 
alter the bloody scenes of a parade-day. But, alas, for this 
short-lived race of ours, all things will have an end, and so is 
it even with the glorious achievements of our general. Time 
is on the wing, and will not stay his flight ; the sun, as if 
frightened at the mighty events of the day, rides down the 
sky, and at the close of the day, when ' r the hamlet is still," 
the curtain of night drops upon the scene ; 

" And glory, like the Phoenix in its fires, 
Exhales its odors, blazes, and expires 1" 



LXXXVIIL— WHO IS INDEPENDENT? 

H. B. RHETT. 

Sir, independence is a very imposing word — a stirring 
word, when appealing to that innate pride which, while it is 
the chief symbol of our fall, has also been the chief cause of 
glory and fame to our aspiring race. Yet, after all, who is 
independent in life ? Who desires to be independent ? "What 
would existence be, without that mutual dependence which 
weaves for us the golden bonds of afTection ; and takes away 
half the weariness of life's pilgrimage ? From whence arise 
all our sympathies, but from our capacity to serve and bless ? 
And to take from us the ability to receive and impart good, 
to be mutually dependent, is to pass over us the shade of 
moral annihilation. The same principles apply to nations, 
who are really neither beasts nor demons, but aggregates of 
human beings — brethren of the same human family. If un- 
controlled by force, nations no more than individuals can be 
degraded by mutual intercourse. On the contrary, its inevi- 
table tendency is to elevate them in the scale of social and 
moral excellence. What is foreign commerce but an ex- 
change of equivalent productions ? And in this exchange, 

6 



122 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

the one party is no more dependent than the other. Both 
are dependent ; or, if you please, both are independent ; 
inasmuch as they give full equivalent for what they receive. 

If, at home, we subject and oppress the many for the ag- 
grandizement and benefit of the tew, it is but consistent that 
we should deal with other nations on no better principles. 
Sir, this is the policy that has made England great ; but is it 
worthy of our imitation ? Mark her attitude in the world. 
Nations in all quarters of the globe in military bondage- to 
her — pushing her conquests along the Himmalaya Moun- 
tains—massacring the Chinese to protect her manufacture 
of opium — looking w r ith avidity to central America and the 
West Indies, and seeking to exclude our commerce from the 
African seas, by claiming the right of search over our mer- 
chantmen, for the same unhallowed purposes of monopoly ; 
and on every border of our Union — in the East, in the West, 
in the South, on the ocean — we are assailed and insulted by 
her arrogant pretensions. Great she unquestionably is ; and 
I, too, who look back to her as my father land with reverence, 
and not without affection, may be dazzled by her bright as- 
cendency. Great, she unquestionably is ; but she is also the 
greatest robber and oppressor that now controls the destinies 
of men. And where has all her greatness, and her glory, 
placed her people ? Hear the tale which every wind, sweep- 
ing across the Atlantic, brings of their appalling condition. 
Bowed down with taxes, they work for life, and thank God 
for even so graciou" a privilege. The barrack and the facto- 
ry stand together ; whilst famine, and its fierce attendant, 
crime, fill her poor-houses and prisons. Day and night, the 
unceasing moan arises lor bread ; and should nature rebel, 
and the people rise, the dragoon's sabre settles the right. 

It is not by following England, and the great nations of the 
old world — leprosied all over and festering in the abuse of 
ages — that we are to build up American prosperity and great- 
ness. Our institutions are based on far different principles 
from theirs. We affect not power, but right ; we aim not to 
be great, but to be happy and free. We must not look back, 
but forward, and press on under the guidance of the gr^at 
principle of Christian morality, on which our institutions ire 
based, to the mighty destiny which awaits us. 



REMEMBRANCE OF WRONGS. 123 



LXXXIX.--CONDITION OF INSOLVENT DEBTORS. 

HENRY CLAY. 

And when is it that w r e are called upon to retrace our 
steps, and to subvert the whole system of beneficent measures 
adopted at the extra session, by beginning with the repeal of 
the bankrupt law, and ending with that of the law for the 
distribution of the proceeds of the public lands ? Three days 
only before the commencement of the operation of the bank- 
rupt law r ! Should the work of destruction be accomplished 
they will not be days of grace and mercy, but of cruelty and 
inhumanity. Yes, the Senate, which has twice, after an in- 
terval of sufficient length to insure the fullest consideration, 
deliberately pronounced its judgment in favor of this law, is 
now asked to reverse that judgment, to undo its own work, 
to deprive creditors of the great benefits which are secured 
to them, to let loose the rigors of the law r upon honest debt- 
ors, and to replunge them in hopeless despair. 

Their condition resembles that of innocent and unfortunate 
men, long and unjustly incarcerated within the dark walls of 
a jail. Its door is half open ; they are rushing towards it, 
pale, emaciated, and exhausted ; the light of heaven has once 
more beamed upon their haggard faces, and once more they 
begin to breathe the cold pure air of an uncontaminated at- 
mosphere. At this instant of time, the Senate is called upon 
to drive them back to their gloomy and loathsome cells, and 
to fling back that door upon its grating hinges. And I am 
invited to unite in this work of inhumanity and cruelty. I 
have not the heart to do it. I have not the hand to do it. I 
cannot, I will not do it. 



XC- REMEMBRANCE OF WRONGS. 

RUFUS CHOATE. 

We are above all this. Let the highland clansman, half 
naked, half civilized, half blinded by the peat smoke of his 
cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, 
and keep the keen, deep, and poisonous hatred, set on fire of 
hell, alive if he can ; let the North American Indian have 



j 24 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

his, and hand it down from father to son, by heaven knows 
what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs 
smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet ; let such 
a country as Poland, cloven to the earth, the armed heel 
on the radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul incapable to 
die, let her " remember the wrongs of days long past ;" let 
the lost and wandering tribes of Israel remember theirs- — the 
manliness or sympathy of the v/orld may allow or pardon this 
*i them ; but shall America, young, free, prosperous, just set- 
t iig out on the highway of heaven, " decorating and cheering 
the elevated sphere she just begins to move in, glittering like 
the morning star, full of life and joy," shall she be supposed 
to be polluting and corroding her noble and happy heart, by 
moping over old stories of stamp act, and tea tax, and the 
firing of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake in a time of peace ? 
No, sir ; no, sir ; a thousand times no ! Why, I protest I 
thought all that had been settled. I thought two wars had 
settled it all. What else was so much good blood shed for 
on so many more than classical fields of revolutionary glory ? 
For what was so much good blood more lately shed at Lun- 
dy's Lane, at Fort Erie, before and behind the lines at New 
Orleans, on the deck of the Constitution, on the deck of the 
Java, on the lakes, on the sea, but to settle exactly these 
" wrongs of past days ?" And have we come back sulky and 
sullen from the very field of honor ? For my country I deny 
it. We are born to happier feelings. We look on England 
as we look on France. We look on them, from our new 
world, not unrenowued, yet a new world still ; and the blood 
mounts to our cheeks ; our eyes swim ; our voices are stifled 
with emulousness of so much glory ; their trophies will not 
let us sleep ; but there is no hatred at all ; no hatred ; all for 
honor, nothing for hate ! We have — we can have — no bar- 
barian memory of wrongs, for which brave men have made 
the last expiation to the brave. 



XCL— MILITARY CHaBACTER OF GEN. TAYLOR. 

H. W. HTLL1ARD. 

We are at a loss whether to admire most his faithful 
discharge of every duty — his genius and courage in battle, or 
the humanity which impelled him when the battle was over 



MILITARY CHARACTER OF GEX. TAYLOR. 125 

to minister to suffering. The eagles of his country have 
never known defeat when borne by him. There was a self- 
reliance about him — a consciousness of strength — a determi- 
nation to drive his enemy before him, which made an army 
under his command invincible. Cromwell was accustomed 
to ride down at the head, of his Ironsides, against the most 
formidable hosts, and dash against them like a living ava- 
lanche, which nothing could resist ; and, like him, Taylor, 
with his stony will, his iron purpose, and his unflinching 
courage, has, at the head of a few well-trained American 
troops, driven before him powerful enemies. Perhaps in the 
history of the world the power of a single will was never 
more triumphantly exhibited than it was at Buena Vista. 
Taylor had been advised to fall back for safety on Monterey 
— stripped of some of his best troops — far advanced in the 
enemies* country, with an army numbering only about four 
thousand, and but one third of them regulars — with no reserv- 
ed force to support him — with the intelligence brought in 
that Santa Anna, at the head of twenty thousand men, was 
marching against him ; then he took his position in a gorge 
of the Sierra Madre, and determined to meet the shock of 
battle. He would neither retreat nor resign ; he would fight. 
There flashed forth a great spirit ; the battle came ; the odds 
were fearful ; but who could doubt the result when American 
troops stood in that modern Thermopylae, and in the presence 
of such a leader ? It was in vain that Mexican artillery 
played upon their ranks, or Mexican infantry bore down 
with the bayonet, or Mexican lancers charged. The spirit of 
the great leader pervaded the men w T ho fought with him, 
and a single glance of his eye could reanimate a wavering 
column. Like Napoleon at the Danube, he held his men 
under fire because he was exposed to it himself; and like 
him, wherever he rode along the lines mounted on a white 
charger, a conspicuous mark for balls, men would stand and 
be shot down ; but they would not give way. Of Taylor on 
that day it may be said, as it has been said of Lannes at 
Montebello, " he was the rock of that battle-field, around 
which men stood with a tenacity which nothing could move. 
If he had fallen, in five minutes that battle would have been 
a rout." That battle closed Gen. Taylor's military career, 
and that battle alone gives him a title to immortality. 



126 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE* 

XCIL— EULOGIUM ON SOUTH CAROLINA. 

ROBERT Y. HAYNE. 

I call upon any one who hears me, to bear witness that 
this controversy is not of my seeking. The Senate will do me 
the justice to remember, that at the time this unprovoked 
and uncalled-for attack was made upon the South, not one 
word had been uttered by me in disparagement of New 
England, nor had I made the most distant allusion either to 
the Senator from Massachusetts, or the State he represents. 
But, sir, that gentleman has thought proper, for reasons best 
known to himself, to strike the South, through one, the most 
unworthy of her servants. He has crossed the border, he has 
invaded the State of South Carolina, is making war upon her 
citizens, and endeavoring to overthrow her principles and her 
institutions. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such 
a conflict, I meet him at the threshold, I will struggle while 
I have life, for our altars and our firesides ; and if God give 
me strength, will drive back the invader discomfited. Nor 
shall I stop there. If the gentleman provoke war, he shall 
have war. Sir, I will not stop at the border ; I will carry 
the war into the enemies' territory and not consent to lay 
down my arms, until I shall have obtained " indemnity for 
the past, and security for the future." It is with unfeigned 
reluctance that I enter upon the performance of this part of 
my duty — I shrink almost instinctively from a course, how- 
ever .necessary, which may have -a tendency to excite sec- 
tional feelings and sectional jealousies. But, sir, the task has 
been ibrced upon me, and I proceed right onward to a per- 
formance of my duty, Be the consequences what they may, 
the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me 
this necessity. The Senator from Massachusetts has thought 
proper to cast the first stone, and if he shall find, according to 
the homely adage, that " he lives in a glass house '"' — on his 
head be the consequences. The gentleman has made a great 
flourish about his fidelity to Massachusetts. I shall make no 
professions of zeal, for the interests and honor of South Caro- 
lina — of that my constituents shall judge. If there be one 
State in the Union (and I say it not in any boastful spirit), 
that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, 
zealous, ardent and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that 
State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement 



EULOGIUM ON SOUTH CAROLINA. 127 

of the revolution up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, how- 
ever great, she has not cheerfully made ; no service she has 
ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your 
prosperity, but in your adversity she has clung to you with 
more than filial affection. No matter what was the con- 
dition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resour- 
ces, divided by parties, or surrounded by difficulties, the call 
of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domes- 
tic discord has ceased at the sound — every man became at 
cuce reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were 
all seen crowding together to the temple, bringing their gifts 
to the altar of their common country. What, sir, was the 
conduct of the South during the Revolution ? Sir, I honor 
New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle : but 
great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least 
equal honor is due to the South. They espoused the cause of 
their brethren with generous zeal which did not suffer them 
to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites 
of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen 
to create commercial rivalship ; they might have found in 
their situation a guaranty that their trade would be forever 
fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on 
all considerations, either of interest or of safety, they rushed 
into the conflict, and fighting for principle, periled all in the 
sacred cause of freedom. Never was there exhibited in the 
history of the world, higher examples of noble darinsr, dread- 
ful suffering, and heroic endurance, than by the Whigs of 
Carolina during that revolution. The whole State, from the 
mountain to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force 
of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot 
where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. 
The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood 
of her citizens — black and smoking ruins marked the places 
which had been the habitations of her children ! Driven 
from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable 
swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South 
Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumpters and her 
Marions, proved by her conduct, that though her soil might 
be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible. 



128 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XCIIL— SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

The eulogium pronounced on the character of the Stato 
of South Carolina by the honorable gentleman, for her revo- 
lutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I 
shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes be- 
fore me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or 
distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I 
claim part of the honor ; I partake in the pride of her great 
names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The 
Laurenses, Hutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the 
Marions — Americans all — whose fame is no more to be hem- 
med in by state lines, than their talents and patriotism were 
capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow 
limits. 

In their day and generation, they served and honored the 
country, and the whole country, and their renown is of the 
treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name 
the gentleman bears himself — does he suppose me less capa- 
ble of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his suffer- 
ings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Mas- 
sachusetts instead of South Carolina ? Sir, does he suppose 
it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to 
produce envy in my bosom ? No, sir — increased gratification 
and delight, rather. Sir, I thank God, that if I am gifted 
with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mor- 
tals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other 
spirit which would drag angels down 

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Sen- 
ate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it hap- 
pened to spring up beyond the limits of my own State and 
neighborhood ; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any 
cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patri- 
otism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country ; or if I 
see an uncommon endowment of heaven — if I see extraor- 
dinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South — and if, 
moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I 
get up here to abate the tithe of a hair, from his just char- 
acter and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
mouth ! 

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts — she 



REPLY TO MR. WEBSTER. 129 

needs none. There she is — behold her and judge for your- 
selves. There is her history — the world knows it by heart. 
The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, 
and Lexington, and Bunker's Hill ; and there they will re- 
main forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great 
struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of 
every State, from New England to Georgia ; and there they 
will lie forever. 

And, sir, where American liberty raised its flist voice, and 
where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still 
lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original 
spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it — ll party 
strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it ; if folly 
and madness, if uneasiness, under salutary and necessary re- 
straint, shall succeed to separate it from that Union, by which 
alone its existence is made sure, it will stand in the end, by 
the side of. that cradle in which its infancy was rocked ; it 
will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still 
retain, on the friends who gather round it ; and it will fall 
at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its 
own glory, and on the very spot of its origin. 



XCIY.— REPLY TO MR. WEBSTER. 

ROBERT Y. HAYNE. 

When I took occasion, two days ago. to throw out some 
ideas with respect to the policy of the government in relation 
to public lands, nothing certainly could have been further 
from my thought, than that I should be compelled again to 
throw myself upon the indulgence of the Senate. Little did 
I expect to be called upon to meet such an argument as was 
yesterday urged by the gentleman from Massachusetts. Sir, 
I questioned no man's opinions — I impeached no man's mo- 
• tives — I charged no party, or state, or section of country, with 
hostility to any other ; but ventured, I thought, in a becom- 
ing spirit, to put forth my own sentiments in relation to a 
great question of public policy. Such was my course. The 
gentleman from Missouri, it is true, had charged upon the 
Eastern States an early and continued hostility towards the 
West, and referred to a number of historical facts and docu- 

6* 



130 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

merits in support of that charge. Now, sir, how have these 
different arguments been met ? The honorable gentleman 
from Massachusetts, after deliberating a whole night upon 
the cause, came into this chamber to vindicate New Eng- 
land, and instead of making up his issue with the gentleman 
from Missouri, on the charges which he had preferred, chooses 
to consider me as the author of those charges, and losing 
sight entirely of that gentleman, selects me as his adversary, - 
and pours out all the vials of his mighty wrath upon my 
devoted head. Nor is he willing to stop there. He goes on 
to assail the institutions and policy of the South, and calls in 
question the principles and conduct of the State which I 
have the honor, in part, to represent. When I find a gen- 
tleman of mature age and experience, of acknowledged 
talents and profound sagacity, pursuing a course like this, de- 
clining the contest offered him from the West, and making 
war upon the unoffending South, I must believe — I am 
bound to believe — he has some object in view he has not 
ventured to disclose. Why is this ? Has the gentleman 
discovered in former controversies with the gentleman from 
Missouri, that he is over-matched by that Senator ? And 
does he hope for a more easy victory over a more feeble ad- 
versary ? Has the gentleman's distempered fancy been dis- 
turbed by gloomy forebodings of " new alliances to be 
formed," at which he hinted? Has the ghost of the mur- 
dered coalition come back, like the ghost of Banquo, to " sear 
the eyeballs" of the gentleman, and will it not " down at his 
bidding ?" Are dark visions of broken hopes and honors 
lost forever, still floating before his heated imagination ? 
Sir, if it be his object to thrust me between the gentleman 
from Missouri and himself, in order to rescue the East from 
the contest which it has provoked with the West, he shall 
not be gratified. Sir, I will not be dragged into the defence 
of my friend from Missouri ! The South shall not be forced 
into a conflict not its own. The gentleman from Missouri is 
able to fight his own battles. The gallant West needs no 
aid from the South, to repel any attack which may be made 
on it from any quarter. Let the gentleman from Massachu- 
setts controvert the facts and arguments of the gentleman 
from Missouri, if he can ; and if he win the victory, let him 
wear his honors ; I shall not deprive him of his laurels. 



REJOINDER TO MR. HAYNE. 131 

XCV.— REJOINDER TO MR. HAYtfE. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

The honorable member complained that I had slept on 
his speech. I must have slept on it or not slept at all. The 
moment the honorable member sat down, his friend from 
Missouri rose, and with much honeyed commendation of the 
speech, suggested that the impressions that it had produced 
were too charming and delightful to be disturbed by other 
sentiments or other sounds, and proposed that the Senate 
should adjourn. Would it have been quite amiable in me, 
sir, to interrupt this good feeling ? Must I not have been 
absolutely malicious if I could have thrust myself forward, 
to destroy sensations thus pleasing ? Was it not much bet- 
ter and kindlier, both to sleep upon them myself, and to al- 
low others, also, the pleasure of sleeping upon them ? But 
if it be meant, by sleeping upon his speech, that I took time 
to prepare a reply to it, it is quite a mistake ; owing to other 
engagements, I could not employ even the interval, between 
the adjournment of the Senate and its meeting the next 
morning, in attention to the subject of the debate. Never- 
theless, sir, the mere matter of fact is undoubtedly true — I 
did sleep on the gentleman's speech, and slept soundly. And 
I slept equally well on his speech of )^esterday, to which I 
am now replying. It is quite possible, that in this respect, I 
possess some advantage over the honorable member : attri- 
butable, doubtless, to a cooler temperament on my part ; for, 
in truth, I slept upon his speeches remarkably well. But, 
the gentleman inquires, why he was made the object of such 
a reply ? Why was he singled out ? If an attack had been 
made on the East, he, he assures us, did not begin it — it was 
the gentleman from Missouri. Sir, I answered the gentle- 
man's speech, because I happened to hear it ; and because, 
also, I chose to give an answer to that speech, which, if un- 
answered, I thought most likely to produce injurious impres- 
sions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original drawer 
of the bill ; I found a responsible endorser before me, and it 
was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his 
just responsibility, without delay. But, sir, this interrogatory 
of the honorable member, was only introductory to an other. 
He proceeded to ask me, w r hether I had turned upon him in 
this debate, from the consciousness that I should find an over- 



132 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

match, if I ventured on a contest with his friend from Mis- 
souri. If, sir, the honorable member. " ex gratia mode*t**v ? 
had chosen thus to defer to his friend, and to pay hiui a 
compliment, without intentional disparagement to others, it 
would have been quite according te the friendly courtesies of 
debate, and not at all ungrateful to my own feelings.. I am 
not one of those, sir, who esteem any tribute of regard, whe- 
ther light and occasional, or more serious and deliberate, 
which may bo bestowed on others, as so much unjustly with 
holden from themselves. But the tone and manner of the 
gentleman's question, forbid me that I thus interpret it. [ 
am not at liberty to consider it as nothing more than a civil- 
ity to his friend. It had an air of taunt and disparagement, 
a little of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not al- 
low me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question 
for me to answer, and so put, as if it were difficult for me to an- 
swer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an over- 
match for myself, in debate here. It seems to me that this is ex- 
traordinary language, and an extraordinary tone for the discus- 
sions of this body. Matches and over-matches ! Those terms 
are more applicable elsewhere, than here, and fitted for other 
assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where 
and what we are. This is a senate : a senate of equals : of men 
of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute in- 
dependence. We know no masters ; we acknowledge no dicta- 
tors. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion ; not 
an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir. as a 
match for no man. I throw the challenge of debate at no 
man's feet. But, then, sir, since the honorable member has 
put the question, in a manner that calls for an answer, I 
will give him an answer ; and I tell him, that holding my- 
self to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know no- 
thing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone, or 
when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, 
that need deter even me from expressing whatever opinions 
I may choose to espouse, from debating whenever I may choose 
to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say, on 
the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered as a matter of 
commendation or compliment, I should dissent from nothing 
which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still 
less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. But, when 
put to me as a matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say to 
the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing less likely 



FINAL TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY. 133 

than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal char- 
acter. The auger of its tone rescued the remark from inten- 
tional irony, which otherwise, probably, would have been its 
general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined, that by this 
mutual quotation and commendation ; if it be supposed, that 
by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each 
his part ; to one the attack , to another the cry of onset : or, 
if it be thought, that by a loud and empty vaunt of antici- 
pated victory, any laurels are to be won here ; if it be ima- 
gined, especially, that any or all of these things will shake 
any purpose of mine, 1 can tell the honorable member, once 
for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing 
with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to 
learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, to be 
betrayed into any loss of temper ; but if provoked, as I trust 
I shall never allow myself to be, into crimination and re- 
crimination, the honorable member may, perhaps, find, that, 
in that contest, there will be blows to take as well as blows 
to give ; that others can state comparisons as significant, at 
least, as his own, and that his impunity may, perhaps, de- 
mand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may 
possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his 
resources. 



XCVI.— FINAL TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY. 

DEM. REVIEW. 

The naked right of a people to change their government 
none but the sturdiest adherents of unrelenting despotism will 
deny. But in the practical determination of a change, par- 
ties will inevitably arise ; they will arrange themselves 
under the operation of necessary influences and principles 
springing from the diversity of human nature. The interests 
fostered by established systems, through the natural instinct 
of selfishness, will speedily form themselves into conservative 
bands. Their dependants, through all the ramifications of 
society, will hasten to swell the same ranks ; while the 
naturally timid, dubious as to the virtue of their fellow-men, 
averse to change, conjuring up dismal prospects of future 
anarchy and misrule, will enlist under the same banners. 
So there will be gathered the wealth and fashion which 



134 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

draws its existence from old customs and laws — the privi- 
lege which subsists on ancient error — and the talent which, 
accustomed to profound veneration, never travels beyond a 
beaten track. They will be met, on the other hand, by the 
untutored yet unsophisticated mass, and those Void, indepen- 
dent men of genius who intuitively seize the right, and labor 
with fearless self-denying energy for human progress. The 
contest will be intense, as the interests and principles in- 
volved are great. As it embraces the great doctrines of 
science, the first truths of government, the welfare of nations, 
and the destinies of a race, a long warfare will infringe on 
the civilities of life, will break the restraints of law, will 
estrange friends, will throw the sword into families, and give 
rein to the wildest excesses of passion. Yet it is not difficult 
to tell where victory will perch. The rights and happiness 
of the many will prevail. Democracy must finally reign. 
There is in man an eternal principle of progress which no 
power on earth may resist. Every custom, law, science, or 
religion, which obstructs its course, will fall as leaves before 
the wind. Already it has done much, but will do more. 
The despotism of force, the absolutism of religion, the feudal- 
ism of wealth, it has laid on the crimson field ; while the 
principle, alive, un wounded, vigorous, is still battling against 
nobility and privilege with unrelaxing strength. It i con- 
tending for the extinction of tyranny, for the abolition of pre- 
rogative, for the reform of abuse, for the amelioration of 
government, for the destruction of monopoly, for the estab- 
lishment of justice, for the elevation of the masses, for the 
progress of humanity, and for the dignity and Avorth of the 
individual man. In this great work it has a mighty and effi- 
cient aid — Christianity, self-purified and self-invigorated, i3 
its natural ally — Christianity struck the first blow at the 
vitals of unjust power. The annunciations of its lofty 
Teacher embodied truths after which the nations in their 
dim twilight had long struggled in vain. These potent doc- 
trines were the inherent dignity, the natural equality, the 
spiritual rights, the glorious hopes, of man. They addressed 
the individual apart from social rank or position. Piercing 
the thick obscurity which ages of darkness have gathered — 
removing the obstructions of heaped-up falsehood and fraud 
— they speak to oppressed, down-trodden man. They speak 
In him in a voice of infinite power ; they touch the chords of 
sensibility, and expand his soul to free, generous action ; they 



AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION. 135 

awaken hope ; tbey administer consolation ; they cherish the 
sense of personal worth; they strengthen faith in truth ; they 
reveal the highest excellence ; they demand unceasing pro- 
gress ; tlitif worship the soul as of higher importance than 
all outward worlds. 

The movement of man, then, must be onward. The vir- 
tue of earth, and the holiness of Heaven, are pledged to his 
support. May God hasten the day of his complete final suc- 
cess ! Then will the downcast look up, then will the earth 
be glad, then will a broad shout of rejoicing break through 
the concave of heaven, and be echoed back from the thrones 
on hisrh. 



XCVIL— AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

J. C. ISACKS. 

Is not this power in the hands of Congress liable to abuse ? 
I put it to the members of this House to answer me that ques- 
tion, from what we know of ourselves ; from what we have 
seen and believe with respect to others ; from the circum- 
stances which surround us ; from the motives which may 
actuate ; the influence which may be exerted upon us ; our 
proneness to temptation ; our love of power ; and a thou- 
sand other considerations, which the mind, honestly in search 
of truth, cannot help but find. Are Ave prepared to say that 
this power is not liable to abuse here ? No, sir, we cannot, 
we know that it may be — that it can be abused ; then send 
it away — part with it at once — give it up to its rightful 
owners — take off the broad reproach of suspicion which rests 
upon us — restore the Representatives of the People to what 
they were chosen for, and what the Constitution intended 
them to be — legislators, and nothing but legislators. Let us 
resume the dignity of our stations and the importance of our 
characters. Gentlemen speak of the confidence which should 
be felt and maintained for Congress — the diguity of its mem- 
bers. I hope it will so decide this question, as to entitle it 
to a nation's confidence, and by preserving its purity, secure, 
unshaken, that confidence. As to the rest, God preserve its 
members from the dignity of office brokers and President ma- 
kers. We want no Warwicks, with their vassals, here — no 
king-makers, that would disgrace the name of Nevil ! 



136 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Gentlemen attempt to divert our attention from the defect? 
in the Constitution, by expressing a reverence for its framers 
approaching to idolatry. Sir, to those who shared in the 
struggle for independence, and laid the deep foundations of 
our Government, I claim an equal participation in rendering 
the full tribute of regard which is due to mortal man. They 
gave us the charter of our liberty ; they could not, Heaven 
did not give us a charter of exemption from the weakness 
and the wickedness of human nature. No, sir, ill the days 
of our Fathers, the golden age of pristine purity — when, ac- 
cording to one gentleman on this floor, " the political little 
finger" of our statesmen could almost work miracles ; and, 
according to another, the palest star in that firmament out- 
shone the whble galaxy of these degenerate times — even then 
our country produced an Arnold ! And who was Arnold ? 
Some obscure, degraded, scape-gallows felon ? No, sir, no ; 
he was found in front of the foremost rank of patriots, with 
a wreath of glory on his brow, which the rough hand of time 
could not tear away — this man became a traitor f 



XC VIII.— MISSION TO PANAMA. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

We are told that the country is deluded and deceived by 
cabalistic words. Cabalistic words ! If we express an emo- 
tion of pleasure at the results of this great action of the spirit 
of political liberty ; if we rejoice at the birth of new Republican 
nations, and express our joy by the common terms of regard 
and sympathy ; if we feel and signify high gratification that, 
throughout this whole continent, men are now likely to be 
blessed by free and popular institutions ; and if in the utter- 
ing of these sentiments, we happen to speak of sister Repub- 
lics, of the great American family of Nations, or of the 
political systems and forms of government of this hemisphere ; 
then, indeed, it seems, we deal in senseless jargon, or impose 
upon the judgment and feeling of the community by cabalis- 
tic words ! Sir, what is meant by this ? Is it intended that 
the people of the United States ought to be totally indifferent 
to the fortunes of these new neighbors ? Is no change, in 
the lights in whioh w^e are to view them, to be wrought, by 



MISSION TO PANAMA. 131 

their having thrown off foreign dominion, established inde- 
pendence, and instituted on our very borders, Republican 
governments, essentially after our own example? If it be a 
weakness to feel a strong interest in the success of these great 
revolutions, I confess myself guilty of that weakness. If it 
be weak to feel that I am an American, to think that recen 
events have not only opened new modes of intercourse, but 
have created also new grounds of regard and sympathy be- 
tween ourselves and our neighbors ; if it be weak to feel that 
the South, in her present state, is somewhat more emphati- 
cally part of America than when she lay obscure, oppressed, 
and unknown, under the grinding bondage of a foreign pow- 
er ; if it be weak to rejoice, when, even in any corner of the 
earth, human beings are able to get up from beneath oppres- 
sion, to erect themselves, and enjoy the proper happiness of 
their intelligent nature ; if this be weak, it is a weakness 
from which I claim no exemption. 

A day of solemn retribution now visits the overproud 
monarchy of Spain. The prediction is fulfilled. The spirit 
of Montezuma and of the Incas might now well say, 

" Art thou, too, fallen, Iberia? Do we see 
The robber and the murderer weak as we ? 
Thou, that hast wasted earth, and dared despise 
Alike the wrath and mercy of the skies, 
Thy pomp is in the grave ; thy glory laid 
Low in the pit thine avarice has made." 

We cannot be so blind, we cannot so shut up our senses, 
and smother our faculties, as not to see that, in the progress 
and establishment of South American liberty, our own example 
has been among the most stimulating causes. That great 
light — a light which can never be hid — the light of our own 
glorious Revolution, has shone on the path of the South 
American Patriots, from the beginning of their course. In 
their emergencies, they have looked to our experience. In 
their political institutions, they have followed our models. 
In their deliberations, they have invoked the presiding Spirit 
of our own Liberty. They have looked steadily, in every 
adversity, to the great northern light. In the hour of 
bloody conflict, they have remembered the fields which have 
been consecrated by the blood of our fathers ; and when they 
have fallen, they have wished only to be remembered with 
them, as men who had acted their parts bravely, for the 
•sause of Liberty in -the Western World. 



138 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XCIX.— OUR DUTY TO REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS. 

PELEG SPRAGUE. 

You talk of erecting statues and marble memorials of the 
Father of his country. It is well. But could his spirit now 
be heard within these walls, would it not tell you, that, to 
answer his fervent prayers, and verify his confident predic- 
tions of your gratitude to his companions in arms, would be 
a sweeter incense, a more grateful homage to his memory, 
than the most splendid mausoleum ? You gave hundrecp. 
of thousands of dollars to La Fayette. It was well ; and 
the whole country resounded, Amen. But is not the citizen 
soldier, who fought by his side, who devoted e rerything to 
your service, and has been deprived of his promised reward, 
equally entitled, I will not say, to your liberality, but to your 
justice ? 

Sir, the present provision for the soldiers of the Revolution 
is not sufficient. Instead of presuming every man to be up- 
right and true until the contrary appears, every applicant 
seems to be presupposed to be false and perjured. Instead 
of bestowing these hard-earned awards with alacrity, they 
appear to have been refused, or yielded with reluctance ; and 
to send away the war-worn veteran, bowed down with the 
infirmities of age, empty from your door, seems to have been 
deemed an act of merit. So rigid has been the construction 
and application of the existing law, that cases most strictly 
within its provisions, of meritorious service and abject pov- 
erty, have been excluded from its benefits. Yet gentlemen 
tell us that the law, so administered, is too liberal ; that it 
goes too far, and they would repeal it. They would take 
back even the little which they have given ! And is this 
possible ? Look abroad upon this wide extended land, upon 
its wealth, its happiness, its hopes ; and then turn to the aged 
soldier who gave you all, and see him descend in neglect ana 
poverty to the tomb ! The time is short. A few years, and 
these remnants of a former age will no longer be seen. 
Then we shall indulge unavailing regrets for our present 
apathy : for, how can the ingenuous mind look upon the grave 
of an injured benefactor ? How poignant the reflection, that 
the time for reparation and atonement has gone forever ! In 
what bitterness of soul shall we look back upon the infatua- 
tion which shall have cast aside an opportunity whi ;h can 



THE ZERO LINE OF VALOR. 139 

never return, to give peace to our conscience. We shall 
then endeavor to stifle our convictions, hy empty honors to 
their bones. We shall raise high the monument, and trum- 
pet loud their deeds, but it will be all in vain. It cannot 
warm the hearts which shall have sunk cold and comfortless 
to the earth. This is no illusion. How often do we see, in 
our public Gazettes, a pompous display of honors to the mem- 
ory of some veteran patriot, who was suffered to linger out 
his latter days in unregarded penury ? 

"How proud we can press to the fun'ral array 

Of him whom we shunn'd in his sickness and sorrow ; 
^ nd bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, 

Those pall shall be borne up by heroe3 to-morrow." 



C.—THE ZERO LINE OF YALOR. 

DAVID BARTON. 

I should like to see this question in matheriatics figured 
out in the rule of three, and the quotient fairly stated. If 
the low war mark or zero line of the Senator's valor, when 
peace is in all our borders, and not a war speck in the sky, 
that I can see, be equal to that of Palafox in the passes of 
the Pyrenees, guarding his native Spain against the invad- 
ing legions of Napoleon Bonaparte ; or of Leonidas, with his 
three hundred Spartans, at the Straits of Thermopylae, 
guarding Sparta and all Greece against the million of myr- 
midons of Xerxes, the king of Persia and of kings ; what 
would be the spring-flood height, or boiling degree of his 
rage, if placed in the Piue-spur-gap of our own Alleghanies, 
with his naked war-knife drawn, to guard the magnificent 
^alley of the Mississippi against the invasive Yankees ; and 
upon lifting up his eyes and looking over the plains below, 
towards the north-east, he should behold the universal Yan- 
kee nation, armed cap-a-pie, with drums beating and ban- 
ners flying, coming to invade us, and lay our valley under 
one sheet of fire, from the Lake of the Woods to the Balize, 
and from the sources of the Missouri to the aforesaid Pine- 
spur-gap ! and to carry away into captivity the brightest 
portion of our mulatto beauties! Figures cannot count it. 
Poets cannot sing it. Homer did his best in Achilles' wrath 



140 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

about the loss of his sweetheart, and while chasing Hector 
around the walls of Troy ; and that barely came up to the 
zero line of the Senator's valor ! And Cervantes is dead ! 
Apropos ! Cervantes was the man for this sort of vaior ! 
It all rushes on the mind "like a flood of coming light |" 
All is not right in the capital ! There is more occasion, 
now, for Dr. Cutbush or Dr. Cutscull, than for any military 
hero to guard us against the Yankees ! These mental illu- 
sions have afflicted the frail sons of Adam in other countries, 
and in climates better than our own ! My honorable friend. 
Don duixotte de la Mancha, a countryman of Palafox, had 
a long spell of them ! On one occasion he attacked, as he 
supposed, an army of steel-clad knights, which turned out to 
be a flock of harmless merinoes ! Then a funeral procession, 
and wounded a friar ! Again, a windmill and a fulling- 
mill, imagining them colossal, enchanted giants, more terri- 
ble than M sop's buffalo bull ! But why recount his freaks, 
when all these honorable Senators have read Cervantes ? 
and they who hope for missions to Spain, South America, or 
Mexico, have, doubtless, read him in the original ! 



CL— EFFECT OF STEADINESS OF PURSUIT. 

ASHER ROBBINS. 

The most interesting instance of the efficacy of this steadi- 
ness of pursuit was given by the city of Athens ; the most 
interesting, because the object was most so. From the earliest 
times, Athens aspired to literature and the elegant arts. By 
a steady pursuit of the policy adopted with a view to this 
end, the city of Athens became such a monument of the arts, 
that even her imperfect and dilapidated remains are at this 
day the wonder of the world. What splendors, then, must 
she have emitted in the day of her splendor ! When, in her 
freshness, she met the morning sun, and reflected back a rival 
glory ! When she was full of the masterpieces of genius in 
every art — creations, that were "said to have exalted in the 
human mind the ideas of the divinities themselves ! The 
fervid eloquence of Demosthenes failed, unequal to the task, 
to do justice to those immortal splendors, when employed, as 
it occasionally was, for that purpose, in his addresses to the 



w 



THE TERRITORIES. 141 

Atheuiu.** '/- -j'ivJ. It was by the steady pursuit of the same 
policy, that their literary works of every kind came to be 
equaiiy the masterpieces of human genius ; and being more 
diffused, and less impaired by the injuries of time, than the 
other monuments of the arts, they were, and still are, the 
wonder of the world, that, after it, the Athenians themselves 
could never surpass them ; whilst others have never been 
able to equal them. Now, what has been the effect ? Lite- 
rature and arts have gathered around that city a charm that 
was, and is felt by all mankind ; which no distance, no time, 
can dispel. No scholar, of any age or clime, but has made 
(in fancy, at least) a pilgrimage to its shore ; there to call 
around him the shades of the mighty dead, whose minds still 
live, and delight and astonish in their immortal works. It is 
emphatically the city of the heart, where the affections de- 
light to dwell ; the green spot of the earth where the fancy 
loves to linger. How poor is brute force — even the most 
magnificent, even the Roman — compared to the empire of 
mind, to which all other minds pay their voluntary homage ! 
Her literature and her arts acquired to Athens this empire, 
whieh her remains still preserve, and always will preserve. In 
contemplating the phenomenon of her literary achievements, a 
great and profound writer could not forbear saying, " that it 
seemed a providential event, in honor of human nature, to show 
to what perfection the species might ascend." Call it provi- 
dential if you please — as every event is, in some sense, provi- 
dential — but it was the effect of artificial causes, as much so 
as the military power of the Romans ; it was the effect of a 
policy, early adopted, and always after steadily pursued. 



OIL— THE TERRITORIES. 

ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 

Mr. Chairman, I see in the territorial possessions of this 
Union the seats of new States, the cradles of new Common- 
wealths, the nurseries, it may be, of new Republican Em- 
pires. I see, in them, the future abodes of our brethren, our 
children, and our children's children, for a thousand generations. 
I see, growing up within their borders, institutions upon 
which the character and condition of a vast multitude of the 



142 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

American family, and of the human race, i\3-sinr time to 
come, are to depend. I feel, that for the oiiginal shaping 
and moulding of these institutions, you and I and each one of 
us, who occupy these seats, are in part responsible. And I 
cannot omit to ask myself what shall I do, that I may de- 
serve the gratitude and the blessing, and not the condemna- 
tion and the curse, of that posterity whose welfare is thus in 
some degree committed to my care ? 

As I pursue this inquiry, sir, I look back instinctively to 
the day, now more than two hundred years ago, when the 
Atlantic coast was the scene of events like those now in pro- 
gress upon tiie Pacific ; — when incited, not, indeed, by the love 
of gold, but by a devotion to that which is better than gold, 
and whose price is ahove rubies, the forefathers of New 
England were planting their colony upon that rock-bound 
shore. I look back to the day when slavery existed nowhere 
upon the American continent,, and before that first Dutch 
ship, " built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," had 
made its way to Jamestown, with a cargo of human beings in 
bondage. I reflect how much our fathers would have exult- 
ed, could they have arrested the progress of that ill-starred 
vessel, and of all other kindred employment. I recall the 
original language of the Declaration of Independence itself, as 
first drafted by Thomas Jefferson, assigning it as one of the 
moving causes for throwing off our allegiance to the British 
monarch, that " he had waged cruel war against human 
nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and 
liberty, in the persons of a distant people who never offended 
him, captivating and carrying them into slavery into another 
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transporta- 
tion thither." 

I remember, too, that whatever material advantages may 
have since been derived from slave labor in the cultivation 
of a crop which was then unknown to our country, that the 
moral character and social influence of the institution are 
still precisely what they were described to be, by those who 
understood them best, in the early days of the Republic. 
And 1 see, too — as no man can help seeing — that almost all 
the internal dangers and domestic dissensions which cast a 
doubt upon the perpetuity of our glorious Union, have been, 
and still are, the direct or indirect consequences of the exist- 
ence of this institution. And thus seeing, thus remembering, 
thus reflecting, how can I do otherwise than resolve, that it 



DANGER OF FACTION. 113 

shall be by no vote of mine, that slavery shall be established 
ID any territory where it does not already exist ! 



CIIL— TRIUMPH OF PIETY OVER ARMS. 

JOSEPH STORY. 

Time was, when the exploits of war, the heroes of in any 
battles, the conquerors of millions, the men who waded 
tn rough slaughter to thrones, the kings whose footsteps were 
darkened with blood, and the sceptered oppressors of the earth, 
were alone deemed worthy themes lor the poet and the 
orator, for the songs of the minstrel, and the hosannas of the 
multitude. Time was, when feats of arms, and tournaments, 
and crusades, and the high array of chivalry, and the pride 
of royal banners waving for victory, engrossed all minds. 
Time was, when the ministers of the altar sat down by the 
side of the tyrant, and numbered his victims, and stimulated 
his persecutions, and screened the instruments of his crimes — 
and there was praise, and glory, and revelry, for these things. 
Murder and rapine, burning cities and desolated plains, if so 
be they were the bidding of royal or baronial feuds, led on by 
the courtier or the clan, were matters of public boast, the de- 
lights of courts, and the treasured pleasure of the fireside 
tales. But these times have passed away. Christianity has 
resumed her meek and holy reign. The Puritans have not 
lived in vain. The simple piety of the Pilgrims of New 
England casts into shade this false glitter, which dazzled and 
betrayed men into the worship of their destroyers. 



CIV.— DANGER OF FACTION. 

WILLIAM GASTON. 



I would not depress your buoyant spirits with gloomy an- 
ticipations, but I should be wanting in frankness, if I did not 
state my conviction that you will be called to the perform- 
ance of other duties unusually grave and important. Perils 
surround you and are imminent, which will require ekar 
heads, pure intentions, and stout hearts, to discern and to 



144 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

overcome. There is no side on which danger may not make 
its approach ; but from the wickedness and madness of 
factions it is most menacing. Time was, indeed, when fac- 
tions contended amongst us with virulence and fury ; but 
they were, or affected to be, at issue on questions of principle ; 
now, Americans band together under the names of men, and 
wear the livery, and put on the badges of their leaders. Then, 
the individuals of the different parties were found side by side, 
dispersed throughout the various districts of our confederated 
Republic ; but now, the parties that distract the land, are al- 
most identified with our geographical distinctions. Now, 
there has come a period, foreseen and dreaded by our Wash- 
ington, by him " who, more than any other individual, found- 
ed this our wide-spreading Errpi r e, and gave to our Western 
World independence and freedom" — by him, who, with a 
father's warning voice, bade us beware of " parties founded 
on geographical discriminations." As yet, the sentiment so 
deeply planted in the hearts of our honest yenr anry, that 
union is strength, has not been uprooted. As yet, they ac- 
knowledge the truth, and feel the force of the homely, but 
excellent aphorism, " United we stand, divided we fall." As 
yet, they take pride in the name of " the United States" — in 
recollection of the fields that were won, the blood which was 
poured forth, and the glory which was gained in the common 
cause, and under the common banner of a united country. 
May God, in his mercy, forbid that I, or you, my friends, 
should live to see the day, when these sentiments and feelings 
shall be extinct ! Whenever that day comes, then is the 
hour at hand, when this glorious Republic, this, at once, na- 
tional and confederated Republic, which, for half a century, 
has presented to the eyes, the hopes, and the gratitude of 
man, a more brilliant and lovely image than Plato, or More, 
or Harrington, ever feigned or fancied, shall be like a tale 
that is told, like a vision that hath passed away. 



OV.— EVIL OF DUELLING. 

LYMAN BEECHES. 



If the widows and the orphans, which this wasting evil 
has created, and is yearly multiplying, might all stand before 
you, could you witness their tears, or listen to their details 



\ 



PURITAN AND SPARTAN HEROISM. 145 

of anguish ? Should they point to the murderers of their 
fathers, their husbands, and their children, and lift up their 
voice, and implore your aid to arrest an evil which had made 
them desolate, could you disregard their cry ? Before their 
eyes could you approach the poll, and patronize by your votes 
the destroyers of their peace ? Had you beheld a dying 
father conveyed bleeding and agonizing to his distracted fam- 
ily, had you heard their piercing shrieks, and witnessed their 
frantic agony ; would you reward the savage man who had 
plunged them in distress ? Had the duellist destroyed your 
neighbor — had your own father been killed by the man who 
solicits your suffrage — had your son, laid low by his hand, 
been brought to your door pale in death, and weltering in 
blood — would you then think the crime a small one ? Would 
you honor with your confidence, and elevate to power by your 
vote, the guilty monster ? And what would you think of 
your neighbors, if. regardless of your agony, they should re- 
ward him ? And yet, such scenes of unutterable anguish 
are multiplying every year Every year the duellist is cut- 
ting down the neighbor of somebody. Every year, and 
many times in the year, a father is brought dead or dying to 
his family, or a son laid breathless at the feet of his parents ; 
and every year you are patronizing by your votes the men 
who commit these crimes, and looking with cold indifference 
upon, and even mocking, the sorrows of your neighbors. 
Beware — I admonish you to beware, and especially such of 
you as have promising sons preparing for active life, lest, 
having no feelings for the sorrows of another, you be called 
to weep for your own sorrow ; lest your sons fall by the hand 
of the very murderer for whom you vote, or by the hand of 
some one whom his example has trained for the work of 
blood. 



CVL— PURITAN AND SPARTAN HEROISM. 

RUFUS CHOATE. 

If one w 7 ere called on to select the more glittering of the 
instances of military heroism to which the admiration of the 
v-orld has been most constantly attracted, he would make 
choice, I imagine, of the instance of that desperate valor, in 
which, in obedience to the laws, Leonidas and his three hun- 



116 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

dred Spartans cast themselves headlong, at the passes of 
Greece, on the myriads of their Persian invaders. From the 
simple page of Herodotus, longer than from the Amphyctionic 
monument, or the games of the commemoration, that act 
still speaks to the tears and praise of all the world. Yet I 
agree with a late brilliant writer, in his speculation on the 
probable feelings of that devoted band, left alone awaiting, 
till day should break, the approach of a certain death, in 
that solitary defile. Their enthusiasm and their rigid and 
Spartan spirit, which had made all ties subservient to obedi- 
ence to the law, all excitement tame to that of battle, all 
pleasure dull to the anticipation of glory, probably made the 
hours preceding death the most enviable of their lives. They 
might have exulted in the same elevated fanaticism, which 
distinguished afterwards the followers of Mahomet, and saw 
that opening paradise in immortality below, which the Mus- 
sulman beheld in anticipation above ! Judge if it were not 
so ; judge, if a more decorative and conspicuous stage was 
ever erected for the transaction of a deed of fame. Every 
eye in Greece, every eye throughout the world of civilization, 
throughout even the uncivilized and barbaric East, was felt 
to be turned directly upon the playing of that brief part. 
There passed round that narrow circle in the tent, the stern, 
warning image of Sparta, pointing to their shields, and say- 
ing, "With these to-morrow, or upon them." Consider, too, 
that the one concentrated and comprehensive sentiment, 
graved on their souls as by fire and by steel, by all the influ- 
ences of their whole life, by tha mothers' lips, by the fathers' 
example, by the law, by venerated religious rites, by public 
opinion, strong enough to change the moral quality of things, 
by the whole fashion and nature of Spartan culture, was 
this ; seek first, seek last, seek always, the glory of conquer- 
ing or falling in a " well fought field." Judge, if, that night 
as they watched the dawn of the last morning their eyes 
could ever see ; as they heard with every passing hour the 
stilly hum of the invading hosts, his dusky lines stretched 
out without end, and now almost encircling them around ; as 
they remembered their unprofaned home, city of heroes and 
of the mother of heroes, — judge if, watching them in the 
gate-way of Greece, this sentiment did not grow to the nature 
of madness, if it did not run in torrents of literal fire to and 
from the laboring heart ; and when morning came an ] 
passed, and they had dressed their long locks for battle, and 



APPEAL IN BEITALF OF GREECE. 147 

when, at a little after noon, the countless invading throng 
was seen at last to move, was it not with a rapture, as if ail 
the joy, all the sensation of life, was in that one moment, 
that they cast themselves, with the fierce gladness of moun- 
tain torrents, headlong on that brief revelry of glory ! 

I acknowledge the splendor of that transaction in all its 
aspects. I admit its morality, too, and its useful influence 
on every Grecian heart, in that greatest crisis of Greece. 
\nd yet, do you not think that whoso could, by adequate de- 
scription, bring before you that winter of the Pilgrims, its 
brief sunshine, the nights of storm, slow waning ; the damp 
and icy breath, felt to the pillow of the dying ; its destitu- 
tions ; its contrast with all their former experience in life ; its 
utter insulation and loneliness ; its death-beds and burials ; its 
memories ; its apprehensions ; its hopes ; the counsels of the 
prudent ; the prayers of the pious ; the occasional cheerful 
hymn, in which the strong heart threw off its burthen, and 
asserting its unvanquished nature, went up like a bird of 
dawn to the skies, — do ye not think that whoso could de- 
scribe them, calmly waiting in that defile, lonelier and darker 
than Thermopylae, for a morning that might never dawn, or 
might show them, when it did, a mightier arm than the Per- 
sian raised as in act to strike, would he not sketch a scene of 
more difficult and rarer heroism ? A scene, as Wordsworth 
has said, "melancholy, yea, dismal, yet consolatory and full 
of joy ;" a scene, even better fitted, to succor, to exalt, to 
lead the forlorn hopes of all great causes, till time shall be 
no more ! 



CVIL— APPEAL IN BEHALF OF GREECE 

HENRY CLAY. 

There is reason to apprehend, that a tremendous storm is 
ready to burst upon our happy country — one which may call 
into action all our vigor, courage and resources. Is it wise 
or prudent, in preparing to breast the storm, if it must come, 
to talk to this nation of its incompetency to repel European 
aggression — to lower its spirit, to weaken its moral energy, 
and to qualify it for easy conquest and base submission? If 
there be any reality in the dangers which are supposed to en- 
compass us, should we not animate the people, and adjure them 



148 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

to believe, as I do, that our resources are ample ; and that we 
can bring into the field a million of freemen, ready to exhaust 
their last drop of blood, and to spend the last cent in the defence 
of the country, its liberty, and its institutions ? Sir, are 
these, if united, to be conquered by all Europe combined ? 
All the perils to which we can possibly be exposed, are much 
less in reality, than the imagination is disposed to paint them. 
No, sir, no united nation, that resolves to be free, can be 
conquered. And has it come to this ? Are we so humbled, 
so low, so debased, that we dare not express our sympathy for 
suffering Greece ? That we dare not articulate our detesta- 
tion of the brutal excesses of which she has been the bleed- 
ing victim, lest we might offend some one or more of their 
imperial and royal majesties ? 

Sir, it is not tor Greece alone that I desire to see this meas- 
ure adopted. It will give to her but little support, and that 
purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, for 
the credit and character of our common country, for our own 
unsullied name, that I hope to see it pass. Mr. Chairman, 
what appearance on the page of history would a record like 
this exhibit ? — " In the mouth of January, in the year of our 
Lord and Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom 
beheld, with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexampled 
wrongs and inexpressible miseries of Christian Greece, a prop- 
osition was made in the Congress of the United States, 
almost the sole, the last, the greatest depository of human 
hope and human freedom, the representatives of a gallant 
nation, containing a million of freemen ready to fly to arms, 
while the people of that nation were spontaneously expressing 
its deep-toued feeling, and the whole continent by one simul- 
taneous emotion, was rising, and solemnly and anxiously sup- 
plicating and invoking high heaven to spare and succor Greece, 
and to invigorate her arms in her glorious cause, while temples 
and senate-houses were alike resounding with one burst of gen- 
erous and holy sympathy ; in the year of our Lord and Saviour 
— that Saviour of Greece and of us — a proposition was offered 
in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to 
inquire into her state and condition, with a kind expression 
of our good wishes and our sympathies — and it was rejected !" 
Go home, if you can ; go home, if you dare, to your constit- 
uents* and tell them that you voted it down ; meet, if you 
can, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, 
and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PILGRIMS. 149 

own sentiments ; that you cannot tell how, but that some 
unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some inde- 
finable danger, drove you from your purpose ; that the spec- 
tres of cirneters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed beibre 
you and alarmed you ; and that you suppressed all the noble 
feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national inde- 
pendence, and by humanity ! I cannot bring myself to be- 
lieve, that such will be the feeling of a majority of the com- 
mittee. But, for myself, though every friend of the cause 
should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the gentle- 
man from Massachusetts, I will give to this resolution the 
poor sanction of my unqualified approbation. 



CVIIL— ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PILGRIMS. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

Were it only an act of rare adventure, were it a trait in 
foreign or ancient history, we should fix upon the achieve- 
ments of our fathers as one of the noblest deeds in the annals 
of the world. Were we attracted to it by no other feeling 
than that sympathy we feel in all the fortunes of our race, 
it could lose nothing, it must gain, in the contrast, with 
whatever history or tradition has preserved to us of the wan- 
derings and the settlements of the tribes of man. A conti- 
nent, for the first time, effectually explored ; a vast ocean, 
traversed by men, women, and children, voluntarily exiling 
themselves from the fairest portions of the Old World ; and 
a great nation grown up, in the space of two centuries, on 
the foundation so perilously laid by this feeble band — point 
me to the record, or to the tradition of anything that can 
enter into competition with it ! It is the language, not of 
exaggeration, but of truth and soberness, to say that there is 
nothing in the accounts of Phoenician, of Grecian, or of Ro- 
man colonization, that can stand in the comparison. 

Accomplishing all they projected, — what they projected 
was the least part of what has come to pass. Did they pro- 
pose, to themselves a refuge, beyond the sea, from the reli- 
gious and the political tyranny of Europe ? They achieved 
not that alone, but they have opened a wide asylum to all 
the victims of oppression throughout the world. We our- 



150 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

selves have seen the statesmen, the generals, the kings of the 
elder world flying for protection to our shores. Did they look 
for a retired spot, inoffensive for its obscurity, and safe in its 
remoteness, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy 
freedom ot' conscience? Behold the mighty regions, over 
which, in peaceful conquest, — victoria sine clade, — they have 
borne the banner of the cross ! Did they seek, under the 
common franchise of a trading charter, to prosecute a frugal 
commerce, in reimbursement of the expenses of their humble 
establishment ? The fleets and navies of their descendants 
are on the farthest ocean ; and the wealth of the Indies is 
now wafted, with every tide, to the coasts where, with hook 
and line, they painfully gathered up their frugal earnings. 
In short, did they, in their brightest and most sanguine mo- 
ments, contemplate a thrifty, loyal, and prosperous colony, 
portioned off, like a younger son of the imperial household, to 
an humble and dutiful distance ? Behold the spectacle of an 
independent and powerful Republic, founded on the shores 
where some of those are but lately deceased who saw the 
first born of the Pilgrims ! 

And shall we stop here ? Is the tale now told ? Is the 
contrast now complete ? Are our destinies all fulfilled ? 
Why, friends, we are in the very morning of our days ; our 
numbers are but a unit ; our national resources but a pittance ; 
our hopeful achievements in the political, the social, and the 
intellectual nature, are but the rudiments of what the chil- 
dren of the Pilgrims must yet attain. I dare adventure the 
prediction, that he who, two centuries hence, shall stand 
where I stand, and look on our present condition, will sketch 
a contrast far more astonishing ; and will speak of our times 
as the day of small things, in stronger and juster language 
than any in which we can depict the poverty and wants of 
our fathers. 



C1X.— DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO AMERICA. 

GRIMKE. 

We cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence ; 
we cannot love her with an affection, too pure and fervent ; 
we cannot serve her with an energy of purpose or a faithful- 



DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO AMERICA. 151 

ncss of zeal, too steadfast and ardent. And what is oui 
country ? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, 
with her countless sails, and the rocky ramparts of her shores. 
It is not the North, with her thousand villages, and her har- 
vest-home, with her frontiers of the lake and the ocean. It is 
not the West, with her forest-sea and her inland isles, with 
her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn, with her 
beautiful Ohio, and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the 
South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich 
plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of 
the rice-field. What are these but the sister families of one 
greater, better, holier family, our country ? I come not here 
to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the patriot 
statesman : but I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the 
rights, and to plead for the interests of American Literature. 
And be assured, that we cannot, as patriot scholars, think 
too highly of that country, or sacrifice too much for her. 
And let us never forget, let us rather remember with a reli- 
gious awe, that the union of these States is indispensable to 
our Literature, as it is to our national independence and our 
civil liberties, to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement. 
If, indeed, we desire to behold a Literature like that, which 
has sculptured with such energy of expression, which has 
painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the 
follies of ancient and modern Europe : if we desire that our 
land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the 
painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic 
scenery of war ; the glittering march of armies, and the 
revelry of the camp, the shrieks and blasphemies, and all 
the horrors of the battle-field ; the desolation of the harvest, 
and the burning cottage ; the storm, the sack, and the ruin 
of cities : if we desire to unchain the furious passions of 
jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge and ambition, 
those lions, that now sleep harmless in their den : if we de- 
sire, that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with 
the blood of brothers ; that the winds should waft from the 
land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and the 
smoke of battle ; that the very mountain tops should become 
the altars for the sacrifice of brothers : if we desire that these, 
and such as these — the elements, to an incredible extent, of 
the Literature of the old world — should be the elements of 
our Literature, then, but then only, let us hurl from its ped- 
estal the majestic statue of our Union, and scatter its frag- 



152 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

menis over all our land. But, if we covet for our country 
the noblest, purest, loveliest Literature the world has ever 
seen, such a Literature as shall honor God, and bless man- 
kind ; a Literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's 
face, whose tears " would not stain an angel's cheek ;" then 
let uc cling to the union of these States, with a patriot's love, 
with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a Christian's hope. On 
her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God ; 
at the height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, edu- 
cated, peaceful, Christian people, American Literature will 
find that the intellectual spirit is her very tree of life, and 
that Union, her garden of paradise. 



CX.— DEATH OF HAMILTON. 

ELIPHALET NOTT. 

*' How are the mighty fallen ?" And, regardless as we are 
of vulgar deaths, shall not the fall of the mighty affect us ? 
A short time since, and he, who is the occasion of our sor- 
rows, was the ornament of his country. He stood on an emi- 
nence, and glory covered him. From that eminence he has 
fallen — suddenly, forever, fallen. His intercourse with the 
living world has now ended ; and those, who would hereafter 
find him, must seek him in the grave. There, cold and life- 
less, is the heart which just now was the seat of friendship. 
There, dim and sightless, is the eye, whose radiant and enli- 
vening orb beamed with intelligence; and there, closed for- 
ever, are those lips, on whose persuasive accents we have so 
often, and so lately, hung with transport ! From the dark- 
ness which rests upon his tomb, there proceeds, methinks, a 
light in which it is clearly seen, that those gaudy objects, 
which men pursue, are only phantoms. In this light, how 
dimly shines the splendor of victory ; how humble appears 
the majesty of grandeur ! The bubble, which seemed to 
have so much solidity, has burst ; and we see again that all 
below the sun is vanity. 

True, the funeral eulogy has been pronouueed ; the sad 
and solemn procession has moved ; the badge of mourning 
has already been decreed, and presently the sculptured 
marble will lift up its front, proud to perpetuate the name of 



INVECTIVE OF HUNGARY. 153 

Hamilton, and rehearse to the passing traveller his virtues. 
Just tributes of respect ! And to the living useful. But to 
him, mouldering in his narrow and humble habitation, what 
are they ? How vain ! how unavailing ! 

Approach, and behold, while I lift from the sepulchre its 
covering ! Ye admirers of his greatness ; ye emulous of his 
talents and his fame, approach, and behold him now. How 
pale ! How silent ! No martial bands admire the adroit- 
ness of his movements ; no fascinated throng weep, and melt, 
and tremble at his eloquence ! Amazing change ! a shroud ! 
a coffin ! a narrow, subterraneous cabin ! This is all that 
now remains of Hamilton ! And is this all that remains «f 
him ? During a life so transitory, what lasting monument, 
then, can our fondest hopes erect ! 



CXI.— INVECTIVE OF HUNGARY. 

A. TV. BUEL. 

The spirit of popular freedom in Europe, during the late 
struggle of Hungary, asked us a solemn question. The Exec- 
utive was called upon to say yea or nay. Hungary listened 
with anxious hopes. She was impatient for the response, and 
the eloquence of truth, of a righteous cause, burst forth in 
every word she uttered. But it has been all in vain, and 
now, in tones of eloquent and burning reproof, she thus turns 
to her Russian invader. 

You seek to encompass the earth with your ambition. The 
world exclaims against you, and reproachfully calls you 
sovereign of a barbarian horde. Asia speaks out : Your 
neighborhood has only served to bring upon my borders bloody 
and protracted wars. Says Persia : For a century you have 
desolated my remote frontiers and provinces, with the horrors 
of a cruel warfare. Circassia asks : When will you cease to 
massacre my people, and grant me that liberty and indepen- 
dence which my victorious arms deserve ? England re- 
proves : I see you in the swift-coming future advancing to 
the banks of the Indus, and about to bring war upon my 
dominions in the East. Turkey adds : You have converted 
my cities into forts, and for centuries obliged me to watch 
your threatened descent upon my fair capital. France sends 

7* 



154 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

her lemons to Italy, as she sees her influence ahout to he felt 
upon the hanks of the Tiber. Poland yet cries beneath hei 
fetters : When will you unbar the prison-door ? Europe 
chides : Upon the partition of Poland you claimed the lion's 
share, and claimed it too at the peace of Vienna. 

And now, you offer Siberia in exchange for fair Hungary. 
Yet, I was at peace with you. I sought freedom from Aus- 
trian tyranny, and you interfered to crown my misfortunes 
with your cruelties. You warred against my national exist- 
ence. You drove my once happy people to flee for refuge to 
the mountains ; to abandon their hearths ; to forsake their 
altars ; to poison their waters, lest they might quench your 
thir-t ; to destroy their bread, lest they might feed you ; to 
fire their own dwellings, lest they might shelter you. The 
work of destruction, which they had not time to complete, you 
finished. You wantonly desolated their wheat-fields ; you 
tortured their patriot clergy, and inflicted even upon female 
patriotism, your proverbial cruelties. And now, from the un- 
changing snows of Siberia, may be heard the wails of unseen 
Poland, as she rises from her cenotaph, ejaculates the woes 
and sufTe rings you have in store for my children, and with a 
warning voice whispers, "fight on ! — fight on !" 

Such is the first invective of Hungary against her mediat- 
ing oppressor. From this she now turns and appeals to 
the world. To us especially does she thus appeal for sym- 
pathy. " You were oppressed ; so were we. You declared 
and fought for independence, and triumphed upon the field 
of battle ; so did we. You have had the experience of nearly 
three generations, and will you now by silence and inactivity, 
manifest before the world a trembling distrust in the justice 
and wisdom of your principles ? In the days of your weak- 
ness the world sent you a Montgomery, a Kosciusko, and a 
La Fayette ; and now, in the days of your pride and strength, 
fear not to make some just return.' ' 



CXIL— THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

Four years ago, California, a Mexican province, scarcely 
inhabited, and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our 



UNDIVIDED ALLEGIANCE. 155 

usually immoderate desires, except by a harbor capacious and 
tranquil, which only statesmen then foresaw would be useful 
in the Oriental commerce of a far distant, if not merely 
chimerical, future. 

A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of 
our own, and we were celebrating with unanimity and en- 
thusiasm, its acquisition, with its newly discovered, but yet 
untold and untouched mineral wealth, as the most auspicious 
of many and unparalleled achievements. 

To-day, California is a State, more populous than the least, 
and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty States. 
This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking 
admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolu- 
tion of the Union itself. 

No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embar- 
rassments ! no wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing 
responsibilities ! no wonder if we are bewildered by the ever- 
augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes ! 

Shall California be received ? For myself, upon my indi- 
vidual judgment and conscience, I answer, yes. For myself, 
as an instructed representative of one of the States — of that 
one even of the States which is soonest and longest to be 
pressed in commercial and political rivalry, by the new Com- 
monwealth — I answer, yes ; let California come in. Every 
new State, whether she come from the East or from the 
West — every new State, coming from whatever part of the 
continent she may— is always welcome. But California, that 
comes from the clime where the West dies away into the 
rising East — California, which bounds at once the empire and 
the continent — California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, 
in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold — is 
doubly welcome. 



CXIIL— UNDIVIDED ALLEGIANCE. 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

I have heard somewhat here — -and almost for the first time 
in my life — of divided allegiance — of allegiance to the South 
and to the Union — of allegiance to the States severally and 
to the Union. Sir, if sympathies with State emulation and 



J 56 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

pride of achievement could be allowed to raise up another 
sovereign to divide the allegiance of a citizen of the United 
Slates, I might recognize the claims of the State to which, 
by birth and gratitude, I belong — to the State of Hamilton 
arid Jay, of Schuyler, of the Clintons, and of Fulton — the 
State which, With less than two hundred miles of natural 
navigation connected with the ocean, has, by her own enter- 
prise secured to herself the commerce of the continent, and is 
steadily advancing to the command of the commerce of the 
world. But for all this, I know only one country and one 
sovereign — the United States of America, and the American 
people. And such as my allegiance is, is the loyalty of every 
other citizen of the United States. As I speak, he will 
speak when his time arrives. He knows no other country 
and no other sovereign. He has life, liberty, property, 
and precious affections, and hopes for himself and his pos- 
terity, treasured up in the ark of the Union. He knows 
as well, and feels as strongly as I do, that this Government 
is his own Government ; that he is a part of it ; that it was 
established for him, and that it is maintained by him ; that it 
is the only truly wise, just, free, and equal Government that 
has ever existed ; that no other Government could be so wise, 
just, free, and equal ; and that it is safer and more beneficent 
than any which time or change could bring into its place. 

You may tell me, sir, that although all this may be true, 
yet the trial of faction has not yet been made. Sir, if the 
trial of faction has not been made, it has not been because 
faction has not always existed, and has not always menaced 
a trial, but because faction could find no fulcrum on which 
to place the lever to subvert the Union, as it can find no ful- 
crum now ; and in this is my confidence. I would not 
rashly provoke the trial, but I will not suffer a fear which I 
have not, to make me compromise one sentiment — one prin- 
ciple of truth or justice — to avert a danger that all expe- 
rience teaches me is purely chimerical. Let, then, those who 
distrust the Union, make compromises to save it. I shall not 
impeach their wisdom, as I certainly cannot their patriotism ; 
but indulging no such apprehensions myself, I shall vote for 
the admission of California directly, without conditions, with- 
out qualifications, and without compromise. 

For the vindication of that vote, I look not to the verdict 
of the passing hour, disturbed as the public mind now is by 
conflicting interests and passions, but to that period, happily 



MEANS OF HEALTH. 157 

not far distant, when the vast regions over which we are now 
legislating shall have received its destined inhabitants. 

While looking forward to that day, its countless genera- 
tions seem to me to be rising up, and passing in dim and 
shadowy review before us ; and a voice comes forth from 
their serried ranks, saying, " Waste your treasures and your 
armies, if you will ; raze your fortifications to the ground ; 
sink your navies into the sea; transmit to us even a dishon- 
ored name, if you must ; but the soil you hold in trust for us, 
give it to us free. You found it free, and conquered it to ex- 
tend a better and surer freedom over it. Whatever choice 
you have made for yourselves, let us have no partial freedom ; 
let us all be free ; let the reversion of your broad domain 
descend to us unencumbered, and free from the calamities 
and sorrows of human bondage." 



CXIV.— MEANS OF HEALTH. 



HORACE MANN. 



See how the means of sustenance and comfort are distrib- 
uted and diversified throughout the earth. There is not a 
mood of body, from the wautouness of health to the languor 
of the death-bed, for which the wonderful alchemy of nature 
does not proffer some luxury to stimulate our pleasures ; or 
her pharmacy some catholicon to assuage our pains. What 
textures for clothing — from the gossamer thread which the 
silk-worm weaves, to silk-like furs which the winds of Zembla 
cannot penetrate ! As the materials from which to construct 
our dwellings, what (duinceys and New Hampshires of 
granite, what Alleghauies of oak, and what forests of pine, 
belting the continent ! What coal -fields to supply the lost 
warmth of the receding sun ! Nakedness, and famine, and 
pestilence are not inexorable ordinances of nature. Nudity 
and rags are only human idleness or ignorance out on exhi- 
bition. The cholera is but the wrath of God against unclean- 
liness and intemperance. Famine is only a proof of individual 
misconduct, or of national misgovernment. In the woes of 
Ireland, God is proclaiming the wickedness of England, in 
tones as clear and articulate as those in which He spoke 
from Sinai ; and it needs no Hebraist to translate the thunder. 



158 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And if famine needs not to be, then other forms of destitution 
and misery need not to be. But amid the exuberance of this 
country, our dangers spring from abundance rather than from 
scarcity. Young men, especially young men in our cities, 
walk in the midst of allurements lor the appetite. Hence, 
health is imperiled ; and so indispensable an element is 
health in all forms of human welfare, that whoever invigor- 
ates his health has already obtained one of the greatest 
guaranties of mental superiority, of usefulness, and of virtue. 
Health, strength, longevity, depend upon immutable laws. 
There is no chance about them. There is no arbitrary inter- 
ference of higher powers with them. Primarily, our parents, 
and secondarily, ourselves, are responsible for them. The 
providence of God is no more responsible, because the viru- 
lence of disease rises above the power of all therapeutics, or 
because one quarter part of the race die before completing the 
age of one year, — die before completing one seventieth part of 
the term of existence allotted to them by the Psalmist ; — I 
say the providence of God is no more responsible for these 
things, than it is for pickiug pockets or stealing horses. 



CXV.— BRIEF AUTHORITY. 

JAMES A. BAYARD. 

It has been stated as the reproach, sir, of the bill of the 
last session, that it was made by a party at the moment 
when they were sensible that their power was expiring and 
passing into other hands. It is enough for me that the full 
and legitimate power existed. The remnant was plenary 
and efficient. And it was our duty to employ it according to 
our judgments and consciences, for the good of the country. 
We thought the bill a salutary measure, and there was no 
obligation upon us to leave it as a work for our successors. 
Nay, sir, I have no hesitation in avowing, that I had no con 
fidence in the persons who were to follow us. And I was the 
more anxious, while we had the means, to accomplish a work 
which I believed they would not do, and which I sincerely 
thought would contribute to the safety of the nation, by giv- 
ing strength and support to the constitution, through the 
storm to which it was likely to be exposed. The fears which 



THE GROUND OF TREATY. 159 

I then felt have not been dispelled, but multiplied by what I 
have since seen. I know nothing which is to be allowed to 
stand. I observe the institutions of governments falling 
around me ; and where the work of destruction is to end God . 
only knows. We discharged our consciences in establishing 
a judicial system which now exiats ; and it will be for those 
who hold the power of the government to answer for the abo- 
lition of it, which they at present meditate. We are told 
that our law was against the sense of the nation. Let me 
tell those gentlemen they are deceived when they call them- 
selves the nation. They are only a dominant party, and 
though the sun of federalism should never rise again, they 
will shortly find men, better or worse than themselves, 
thrusting them out of their places. I know it is the cant of 
those in power, however they may have acquired it, to call 
themselves the nation. We have recently witnessed an 
example of it abroad. How rapidly did the nation change 
in France ! At one time Brissot called himself the nation ; 
then Robespierre ; afterwards Tallien and Barras ; and, 
finally, Bonaparte. But their dreams were soon dissipated, 
and they awoke in succession upon the scaffold or in banish- 
ment. Let not these gentlemen natter themselves that 
heaven has reserved to them a peculiar destiny. What has 
happened to others in this country, they must be liable to. 
Let them not exult too highly in the enjoyment of a little 
brief and fleeting authority. It was ours yesterday ; it is 
theirs to-day ; but to-morrow it may belong to others. 



CXVI— THE GROUND OF TREATY. 

GOUVERNEUR MORRTS. 

Let me ask on what ground you mean to treat. Do you 
expect to persuade ? Do you hope to intimidate ? If to 
persuade, what are your means of persuasion ? Every gentle- 
man admits the importance of this country. Think you the 
first consul, whose capacious mind embraces the globe, is 
alone ignorant of its value ? Is he a child whom you may 
win by a rattle, to comply with your wishes? Will you, 
like a nurse, sing to him a lullaby ? If you have no hope 
from fondling attentions and soothing sounds, what have you 



160 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

to offer in exchange ? Have you anything to give which he 
will take ? He wants power : you have no power. He 
wants dominion : you have no dominion ; at least none that 
you can grant. He wants influence in Europe : and have 
you any influence in Europe ? What, in the name of heaven 
are the means by which you would render this negotiation 
successful? Is it by some secret spell ? Have you any 
magic power ? Will you draw a circle and conjure up 
devils to assist you ? Or as you rely on the charms of those 
beautiful girls with whom, the gentleman near me says, the 
French grenadiers are to marry ? If so, why do you not 
send an embassy of women ? 

Gentlemen talk of the principles of our government, as if 
they could obtain for us the desired hoon. ^ut what will 
these principles avail ? When you inquire as to the force of 
France, Austria, or Russia, do you ask whether they have a 
habeas corpus act, or a trial by jury ? Do you estimate 
their power, discuss their interior police ? No. The question 
is : How many battalions have they ? What train of artil- 
lery can they bring into the field ? How many ships cau 
they send to sea ? These are the important circumstances 
which command respect and facilitate negotiations. Can 
you display these powerful motives ? Alas ! alas ! To all 
these questions you answer by one poor word — confidence — 
confidence — confidence ; yea, verily, we have confidence. 
We have faith and hope ; aye, and we have charity too. 
Well — go to market with these Christian virtues, and what 
will you get for them ? Just nothing. Yet in the face of 
reason and experience you have confidence ; but in whom ? 
Why, in our worthy president. But he cannot make the 
treaty alone. There must be two parties to a bargain. I 
ask, if you have confidence also in the first consul ? But 
whither, in the name of heaven, does this confidence lead, 
and to what does it tend ? The time is precious. We waste, 
and have already wasted, moments which will never return. 



FOURTH OF JULY, 1851. 161 



CXVII— FOURTH OF JULY, 1851. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

On the Fourth of July, 1776, the representatives of the 
United States of America, in Congress assembled, declare J 
that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to he, free 
and independent States. This declaration, made by most 
patriotic and resolute men, trusting in the justice of their 
cause, and the protection of Providence — and yet not without 
deep solicitude and anxiety — has stood for seventy-five years, 
and still stands. It was sealed in blood. It has met dan- 
gers and overcome them ; it has had enemies, and it has 
conquered them ; it has had detractors, and it has abashed 
them all ; it has had doubting friends, hut it has cleared all 
doubts away ; and now, to-day, raising its august form higher 
than the clouds, twenty millions of people contemplate it 
with hallowed love, and the world beholds it, and the conse- 
quences which have followed, with profound admiration. 
This anniversary animates and gladdens, and unites all 
American hearts. On other days of the year we may be 
party men, indulging in controversies more or less important 
to the public good ; we may have likes and dislikes, and we 
may maintain our political differences often with warm, and 
sometimes with angry feelings. But to-day we are Ameri- 
cans all in all, nothing but Americans. As the great lumi- 
nary over our heads, dissipating mists and fogs, cheers the 
whole hemisphere, so do the associations connected with this 
day disperse all cloudy and sullen weather, and all noxious 
exhalations in the minds and feelings of true Americans. 
Every man's heart swells within him — every man's port and 
bearing become somewhat more proud and lofty, as he re- 
members that seventy-five years have rolled away, and that 
the great inheritance of liberty is still his ; his, undiminished 
and unimpaired ; his, in all its original glory ; his to enjoy, 
his to protect, and his to transmit to future generations. If 
Washington were now amongst us — and if he could draw 
around him the shades of the great public men of his own 
days-^-patriots and warriors, orators and statesmen — and were 
to address us in their presence, would he not say to us — " Ye 
men of this generation, I rejoice and thank G-od for being 
able to see that our labors, and toils, and sacrifices, were not 
in vain. You are prosperous — you are happy — you are grate- 



102 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

ful. The fire of liberty burns brightly and steadily in you* 
hearts, while duty and the law restrain it from bursting forth 
in wild and destructive conflagration. Cherish liberty as you 
love it — cherish its securities as you wish to preserve it. 
Maintain the Constitution which we labored so painfully to 
establish, and which has been to you such a source of inesti- 
mable blessings. Preserve the Union of the States, cemented 
as it was by our prayers, our tears, and our blood, Be true 
to God, your country, and your duty. So shall the whole 
Eastern world follow the morning sun, to contemplate you as 
a nation ; so shall all succeeding generations honor you as 
they honor us ; and so shall that Almighty Power which so 
graciously protected us, and which now protects you, shower 
its everlasting blessings upon you and your posterity. 



CXVIIL— ASPIRATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 

R. M. T. HUNTER. 

The sense of national honor beats high in the American 
heart, and its every pulse vibrates at the mere suspicion of a 
stain upon its reputation. But that same heart is warmed 
with generous impulses and noble emotions. If you would 
moderate its lust of empire and its spirit of acquisition, 
appeal to its magnanimity towards a feeble and prostrate foe 
— appeal to it in the name of the highest aspirations which 
can animate the human heart, the desire for moral excel- 
lence, the love of liberty, and the noble ambition to take the 
post of honor among nations, and lead the advance of civili- 
zation. If our people are once awakened to a true conception 
of the real nature and grandeur of their destiny, the first and 
greatest step, in my opinion, is taken for its accomplishment. 
If my imagination were tasked to select the highest blessing 
for my countrymen, I should say, may they be true to them- 
selves and faithful to their mission. I can conceive of nothing 
of which u is possible for human effort to obtain, greater than 
the destiny which we may reasonably hope to fulfil. If war 
has its dreams, dazzling in splendid pageantry, peace also has 
its visions of a more enduring form, of a higher and purer 
beauty. To solve by practical demonstration the grand 
problem of increasing social power consistent with personal 



ASPIRATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 163 

freedom— to increase the efficiency of the human agent by 
enlarging individual liberty — to triumph over, not only the 
physical, but more difficult still, the moral difficulties which 
lie in the path of a man's progress, and to adorn that path 
with all that is rare and useful in art, and whatever is highest 
in civilization, are, in my opinion, the noblest achievements 
oi^ which a nation is capable. These are the ends to which 
our ambition should be directed. If we reverse the old idea 
of the Deity who presides over our boundaries, let us see so 
far as we are concerned, that his movements are consistent 
with the peace of the world. The sword may be the occa- 
sional, but it is not the familiar weapon of our god Termi- 
nus. The axe and the hoe are his more appropriate em- 
blems. Let him turn aside from the habitations of civilized 
man, his path is toward the wilderness, through whose silent 
solitudes, for more than two centuries, he has been rapidly 
and triumphantly advancing. Let him plunge still deeper 
into the forest, as the natural gravitation of the tide of popu- 
lation impels him onward. His progress in that direction is 
one of unmixed beneficence to the human race. The earth 
smiles beneath his feet, and a new creation arises as if by 
enchantment at his touch. Household fires illuminate his 
line of march, and new-born lights, strange visitants to the 
night of primeval solitude, kindle on domestic altars erected 
to all the peaceful virtues and kindly affections which conse- 
crate a hearth and endear a home. Victorious industiy sacks 
the forest and mines the quarry, for materials for its stately 
cities, or spans the streams and saps the mountain to open 
the way for the advance of civilization still deeper into the 
pathless forest and neglected wild. The light of human 
thought pours in winged streams from sea to sea, and the 
lingering nomad may have but a moment's pause, to behold 
the flying car which comes to invade the haunts so long se- 
cured to savage life. These are the aspirations worthy of 
our name and race, and it is for the American people to de- 
cide whether a taste for peace or the habits of war are most 
consistent with such hopes. I trust that they may te guided 
by wisdom in their choice. 



164- THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

CXIX.— ELOQUENCE. 



HENRY B. STASTOtf. 



"En every enlightened age, eloquence has been a controlling 
element in human affairs. Eloquence is not a gift, but an 
art — not an inspiration, but an acquisition — not an intuition, 
but an attainment. Excellence in this art is attained only 
by unwearied practice, and the careful study of the best 
models. The models lie all around us. The rest is within 
us. Demosthenes and Cicero will be household words, in all 
climes, to the end of time. But, the more one studies the 
masters of Grecian and Roman eloquence, the more readily 
will he yield to the growing opinion that England, France, 
and America, during the last sixty or seventy years, have 
produced a greater number of eloquent orators than flourished 
in all Grecian and Roman history. As objects increase in 
size when seen through a mist, so men tower into giants 
when seen through the haze of antiquity. Without neglect- 
ing the ancient models, let us study those of our own times. 
From both we may catch some of that inspiration which 
bound the audience to the orator, and bade him play upon 
their emotions as the master touches the keys of his familiar 
instrument — which subdued them to tears or convulsed them 
with laughter — which bore them aloft on the wing of imagi- 
nation, or blanched them with horror while narration threw 
the colors upon the canvass which held the judgment and 
the fancy captive, as reason forged the chain of argument, 
and poetry studded its links with the gems of illustration — 
which poured over the subject a flood of rare knowledge, 
laden with the contributions of all sciences and all ages — 
which gambolled in playful humor, or opened the sparkling 
jet cVeau of wit, or barbed the point of epigram, or sketched 
the laughing caricature, gliding from grave to gay, from 
lively to severe, with majesty and grace; — that inspiration 
which, as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the 
judgment, made Felix tremble ; as Demosthenes anathema- 
tized Macedonia, made the Greeks cry out, " Lead us against 
Philip ;" at the thrilling tones of Henry, made America ring 
with the shout, " Give us liberty, or give us death ;" when 
the thunder of Danton shook the dome of the Convention, 
roused all Paris to demand the head of Louis ; and lashed 
into fury or hushed into repose acres of wild peasantry, as the 
voice of O'Connell rose or fell. 



DEATH OF WASHINGTON. 161 



CXX.— DEATH OF WASHINGTON. 

JOHN M. MASON'. 

It must ever be difficult to compare the merits of Wash- 
ington's characters, because he always appeared greatest in 
that which he last sustained. Yet if there is a preference, 
it must be assigned to the lieutenant-general of the armies 
of America. Not because the duties of that station were 
more arduous than those which he had often performed, but 
because it more fully displayed his magnanimity. While 
others become great by elevation, Washington becomes great- 
er by condescension. Matchless patriot ! to stoop, on public 
motives, to an inferior appointment, after possessing and dig- 
nifying the highest offices ! Thrice favored country, which 
boasts of such a citizen ! We gaze with astonishment : we 
exult that we are Americans. We augur everything great,, 
and good, and happy. But whence this sudden horror ? 
What means that cry of agony ? Oh ! 'tis the shriek of 
America ! The fairy vision is fled : Washington is — no 
more ! — 

" How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished I" 

Daughters of America, who erst prepared the festal bower 
and the laurel wreath, plant now the cypress grove, and 
water it with tears. 

" How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished P* 

The death of Washington, Americans, has revealed the 
extent of our loss. It has given us the final proof that we 
never mistook him. Take his affecting testament, and read 
the secrets of his soul. Head all the power of domestic vir- 
tue. Head his strong love of letters and of liberty. Read 
his fidelity to republican principle, and his jealousy of national 
character 

In his acts, Americans, you have seen the man. In the 
complicated excellence of character, he stands alone. Let 
no future Plutarch attempt the iniquity of parallel. Let no 
soldier of fortune, let no usurping conqueror, let not Alexan- 
der or Caesar, let not Cromwell or Bonaparte, let none among 
the dead or the living, appear in the same picture with 
Washington : or let them appear as the shade to his light. 



160 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

CXXL— ADDRESS TO SOUTH CAROLINA. 

ANDREW JACKSON. 

I have urged you to look back to the means that were 
used to hurry you on to the position you have now assumed, 
and forward to the consequences it will produce. Something 
more is necessary. Contemplate the condition of that coun- 
try of which you still form an important part. Consider it? 
government, uniting in one bond of common interest and 
general protection so many different States ; giving to all 
their inhabitants the proud title of American Citizens, pro- 
tecting their commerce, securing their literature and their 
arts, facilitating their inter-cornmunication, defending their 
frontiers, and making their name respected in the remotest 
part of the earth ! Consider the extent of its territory, its 
increasing and happy population, its advance in arts which 
render life agreeable, and the sciences which elevate the 
mind ! See education spreading the lights of religion, hu- 
manity, and general information into every cot f age in this 
wide extent of our Territories and States ! Behold it as the 
asy]um where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge 
and a support ! Look at this picture of happiness and honor, 
and say — we, too, are citizens of America. Carolina is one 
of these proud States : her arms have defended, her best 
blood has cemeuted this happy Union ! And then add, if 
you can, without horror and remorse — this happy Union we 
will dissolve — this picture of peace and prosperity we will 
deface — this free intercourse we will interrupt — these fertile 
fields we will deluge with blood — the protection of that glo- 
rious flag we will renounce — the very names of Americans 
we discard. And for what, mistaken men ! — for what do 
you throw away these inestimable blessings, for what would 
you exchange your share in the advantages and honor of the 
Union ? For the dream of a separate independence — a 
dream interrupted with bloody conflicts with your neighbors, 
and a vile dependence on a foreign power ? If your leaders 
could succeed in establishing a separation, what would be 
your situation ? Are you united at home — are you free from 
the apprehension of civil discord, with all its fearful conse- 
quences ? Do our neighboring republics, every day suffering 
some new revolution, or contending with some new insurrec- 
tion — do they excite your envy ? But the dictates of a high 
duty oblige me solemnly to announce that you cannot succeed. 



AMERICAN HISTORY. 107 

CXXIL— AMERICAN HISTORY. 

GULIAN C. VPJRPLANCK. 

The study of the history of most other nations, fills the 
rrand with sentiments not unlike those which the American 
traveller feels on entering the venerable and lofty cathedral 
of some proud old city of Europe. Its solemn grandeur, its 
vastness, its obscurity, strike awe to his heart. From the 
richly painted windows, filled with sacred emblems and 
strange antique forms, a dim religious light falls around. A 
thousand recollections of romance and poetry, and legendary 
story, come thronging in upon him. He is surrounded by the 
tombs of the mighty dead, rich with the labors of ancient art, 
and emblazoned with the pomp of heraldry. 

What names does he read upon them ? Those of princes 
and nobles who are now remembered only for their vices ; 
and of sovereigns, at whose graves no tears were shed, and 
whose memories lived not an hour in the affect ions of their 
people. There, too, he sees other names, long familiar to him 
ibr their guilty and ambiguous fame. There rest, the blood- 
stained soldier of fortune — the orator, who was ever the 
ready apologist of tyranny — great scholars, who were the 
pensioned flatterers of power — and poets, who profaned the 
high gift of genius, to pamper the vices of a corrupted court. 

Our own history, on the contrary, like that poetical temple 
of fame, reared by the imagination of Chaucer, and decorated 
by the taste of Pope, is almost exclusively dedicated to the 
memory of the truly great. Or rather, like the Pantheon of 
Rome, it stands in calm and severe beauty amid the ruins of 
ancient magnificence and " the toys of modern state." With- 
in, no idle ornament encumbers its bold simplicity. The 
pure light of heaven enters from above and sheds an equal 
and serene radiance around. As the eye wanders about its 
extent, it beholds the unadorned monuments of brave and 
good men who have greatly bled or toiled for their country, 
or it rests on votive tablets inscribed with the names of the 
best benefactors of mankind. 



168 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

CXXIIL— CONTEST OF THE PEOPLE FOR FREEDOM. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

In the efforts of the people, — of the people struggling for 
their rights, moving, not in organized, disciplined masses, but 
in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for 
heart, — there is something glorious. They can then move 
forward without orders, act together without combination, 
and brave the flaming lines of battle, without intrench- 
ments to cover or walls to shield them. No dissolute camp 
has worn off from the feelings of the youthful soldier the 
freshness of that home, where his mother and his sisters sit 
waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good 
news from the wars ; no long service in the ranks of the con- 
queror has turned the veteran's heart into marble ; their valor 
springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to 
the preservation of a life knit by no pledges to the life of 
others. But in the strength and spirit of the cause alone 
they act, they contend, they bleed. In this they conquer. 
The people always conquer. They always must conquer. 
Armies may be defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new 
dynasties be imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and 
slavish race, that care not in what language the covenant 
of their subjugation runs, nor in whose name the deed of their 
barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade ; 
and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued. 
If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. 
Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles ; the 
tangled pathless thicket their palisado, and nature, God, is 
their ally. Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies 
beneath his drifting mountains of sand ; now he buries them 
beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows ; he lets loose 
his tempests on their fleets ; he puts a folly into their coun- 
sels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders ; and never 
gave, and never will give, a final triumph over a virtuous and 
gallant people, resolved to be free. 



RIGHT OF SPANISH AMERICA TO REVOLT. 1C9 

CXXIV.— WELCOME TO LA FAYETTE. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores ! Happy 
arc our eyes, that behold those venerable features ! Enjoy a 
triumph such as never conqueror nor monarch enjoyed — the 
assurance that, throughout America, there is not a bosom which 
does not beat with joy and gratitude at the sound of your 
name ! You have already met and saluted, or will soon 
meet, the few that remain of the ardent patriots, prudent 
counsellors, and brave warriors, with whom you were asso- 
ciated in achieving our liberty. But you have looked round 
in vain for the faces of many, who would have lived years 
of pleasure, on a day like this, with their old companion in 
arms and brother in peril. Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, 
and Hamilton, are gone ; the heroes of Saratoga and York- 
town have fallen before the enemy that conquers all. Above 
all, the first of heroes and of men, the friend of your youth, 
the more than friend of his country, rests in the bosom of the 
soil he redeemed. On the banks of his Potomac be lies in 
glory and in peace. You will revisit the hospitable shades of 
Mount Vernon, but him, whom you venerated as we did, you 
will not meet at its door. His voice of consolation, which 
reached you in the dungeons of Olmutz, cannot now break 
its silence to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the 
grateful children of America will bid you welcome in his 
name. Welcome ! thrice welcome to our shores ! and whith- 
ersoever your course shall take you, throughout the limits 
of the continent, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the 
eye that sees you shall give witness to you, and every tongue 
exclaim, with heartfelt joy, Welcome! welcome ! La Fayette! 



CXXV.— RIGHT OF SPANISH AMERICA TO REVOLT. 

HENRY CLAY. 

I maintain, that an oppressed people are authorized, when 
ever they can, to rise and break their fetters. This was the 
great principle of the English revolution. It was the great 
principle of our own. Our fathers rose ; they breasted the 

e 



773 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

storm ; they achieved our freedom. Spanish America for 
centuries has been doomed to the practical effects of an odious 
tyranny. If we were justified, she is more than justified. 

I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon other 
nations our principles and our liberty, if they do not want 
them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detestable 
despotism. But, if an abused and oppressed people will their 
freedom ; if they seek to establish it ; if, in truth, they have 
established it ; we have a right, as a sovereign power, to no- 
tice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest 
require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father 
of my country, " Born in a land of liberty, my anxious recol- 
lections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are 
irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country, I see an 
oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom. 5 '' Whenever 
I think of Spanish America, the image irresistibly forces itself 
upon my mind, of an elder brother, whose education has been 
neglected, whose person has been abused and maltreated, and 
who has been disinherited by the unkindness of an unnatural 
parent. And, when I contemplate the glorious struggle which 
that country is making, I think I behold that elder brother 
rising, by the power and energy of his fine native genius, to the 
manly rank which nature, and nature's God, intended for him. 

If Spanish America be entitled to success from the justness 
of her cause, we have no less reason to wish that success, 
from the horrible character which the royal arms have givfcn 
to the war. More atrocities, than those which have been 
perpetrated during its existence, are not to be found, even in 
the annals of Spain herself. And history, reserving some of 
her blackest pages for the name of Morillo, is prepared to 
place him by the side of his great prototype, the infamous 
desolater of the Netherlands. He who has looked into the 
history of the conduct of this war, is constantly shocked at 
the revolting scenes which it portrays ; at the refusal, on the 
part of the commanders of the royal forces, to treat, on any 
terms, with the other side ; at the denial of quarters ; at the 
butchery, in cold blood, of prisoners ; at the violation of flags 
in some cases, after being received with religious ceremonies ; 
at the instigation of slaves to rise against their owners ; and 
at acts of wanton and useless barbarity. Neither the weak- 
ness of the other sex, nor the imbecility of infants, nor the 
reverence due to the sacerdotal character, can stay the arm 
of royal vengeance. 



ON THE RECOGNITION OF LA PLATA. 1 7 1 

CXXVL— ON THE RECOGNITION OF LA PLATA. 

HENRY CLAY. 

We have been asked, and asked with a triumph worthy 
of a better cause, why recognize this Republic ? Where is 
the use of it ? And is it possible gentlemen can see no use 
in recognizing this Republic ? For what did this Republic 
fight ? To be admitted into the family of nations. Tell the 
nations of the world, says Pueyrredon, in his speech, that we 
already belong to their illustrious rank. What would be the 
powerful consequences of a recognition of her claim ? 1 ask 
the patriot of '76, how the heart rebounded with joy, on the 
information that France had recognized us ? The moral in- 
fluence of such a recognition, on the patriot of the South, will 
be irresistible. He will derive assurance from it of his not 
having fought in vain. In the constitution of our natures 
there is a point to which adversity may pursue us, without 
perhaps any worse effect than that of exciting new energy to 
meet it. Having reached that point, if no gleam of comfort 
breaks through the gloom, we sink beneath the pressure, 
yielding reluctantly to our fate, and in hopeless despair lose 
all stimulus to exertion. And is there not reason to fear such 
a fate to the patriots of La Plata ? Already enjoying inde- 
pendence for eight years, their ministers are yet spurned 
from the courts of Europe, and rejected by the government of 
a sister Republic ! Contrast this conduct of ours with our 
conduct in other respects. No matter whence the minister 
comes, be it from a despotic power, we receive him ; and 
even now, the gentleman from Maryland would have us send 
a minister to Constantinople, to beg a passage through the 
Dardanelles to the Black Sea, that, I suppose, we might get 
some hemp and bread-stuffs there, of which we ourselves 
produce none ; he who can see no advantage to the country 
from opening to its commerce the measureless resources of 
South America, would send a minister to Constantinople for 
a little trade. Nay, I have seen a project in the newspapers, 
and I should not be surprised, after what we have already 
seen, at its being carried into effect, for sending a minister to 
the Porte. Yes, sir, from Constantinople, or from the Brazils ; 
from Turk or Christian ; from black or white ; from the Dey 
of Algiers, or the Bey of Tunis ; from the devil himself, if he 
wore a crown, we should receive a minister. We even paid 



i?2 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

the expenses of the minister of his Sublime Highness the 
Bey of Tunis, and thought ourselves highly honored by his 
visit. But, let the minister come from a poor Republic, like 
that of La Plata, arid we turn our back on him. The bril- 
liant costumes of the ministers of the royal governments are 
seen glistening in the circles of our drawing-rooms, and their 
splendid equipages rolling through the avenues of the metrop- 
olis ; but the unaccredited minister of the Republic, if he 
visits our President or Secretary of State at all, must do it 
incognito, lest the eyes of Don Onis should be offended by so 
unseemly a sight ! 



CXXVIL— ON THE JUDICIARY. 

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. 

The judicial power, that fortress of the Constitution, is 
now to be overturned. With honest Ajax, I would not only 
throw a shield before it, I would build around it a wall of 
brass. But I am too weak to defend the rampart against the 
host of assailants. I must call to my assistance their good 
sense, their patriotism, and their virtue. Do not, gentlemen, 
suffer the rage of passion to drive reason from her seat. If 
this law be indeed bad, let us join to remedy the defects. 
Has it been passed in a manner which wounded your pride 
or roused your resentment ? Have, I conjure you, the mag- 
nanimity to pardon that offence. I entreat, I implore you, to 
sacrifice those angry passions to the interests of our country. 
Pour out this pride of opinion on the altar of patriotism. Let 
it be an expiatory libation for the weal of America. Do not, 
for God's sake, do not suffer that pride to plunge us all into 
the abyss of ruin. Indeed, indeed, it will be but of little 
avail, whether one opinion or the other be right or wrong ; 
ft will heal no wounds ; it will pay no debts ; it will rebuild 
no ravaged towns. Do not rely on that popular will, which 
has brought us frail beings into political existence. That 
opinion is but a changeable thing It will soon change 
This very measure will change it. You will be deceived. 
Do not, I beseech you, in reliance on a foundation so frail, 
commit the dignity, the harmony, the existence of our nation 
to the wild wind. Trust not your treasure to the waves 



NECESSITY OF RESISTANCE. 173 

Throw not your compass and your charts into the ocean. Do 
not believe that its billows will waft you into port. Indeed 
indeed, you will be deceived. Cast not away this only 
anchor of your safety. I have seen its progress. I know 
the difficulties through which it was obtained. I stand in 
the presence of Almighty God, and of the world ; and I de- 
clare to you, that if you lose this charter, never! no, never 
will you get another. We are now, perhaps, arrived at the 
parting point. Here, even here, we stand on the brink of 
fate. Pause — pause ! — For heaven's sake, pause ! 



CXXVIIL— NECESSITY OF RESISTANCE. 

PATRICK HENRY. 

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided ; and 
that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judg- 
ing of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, 
I wish to know what has been the conduct of the British 
ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with 
which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and 
the house ? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition 
has been lately received ? Trust it not, sir ; it will prove a 
snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with 
a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our 
petition comports with those warlike preparations which 
cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies 
necessary to a work of love and reconciliation ? Have we 
shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must 
be called in to win back our love ? Let us not deceive our- 
selves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjuga- 
tion ; the last arguments to which kings resort. There is no 
longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free — if we 
mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for 
which we have been so long contending — if we mean not 
basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been 
so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never 
to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be 
obtained — we must fight ! I repeat it, sir, we must fight 
An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is lef 



174 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

They tell us, sir, that we are weak ; unable to cope with 
«?o formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger ? 
Will it be the next week, or the next year ? Will it be 
when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard 
shall be stationed in every house ? Shall we gather strength 
by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means 
of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and 
hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall 
have bound us hand and foot ? Sir, we are not weak, if we 
make a proper use of those means which the God of nature 
has placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in 
the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which 
we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can 
send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles 
alone. There is a just God, who presides over the destinies 
of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles 
for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone ; it is to 
the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no 
election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too 
late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in 
submission and slavery ! Our chains are forged ! Their 
clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston ! The war 
is inevitable — and let it come ! I repeat it, sir, let it come. 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen 
may cry, Peace ! peace ! — but there is no peace. The war 
is actually begun ! The next gale that sweeps from the north 
will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms ! Our 
brethren are already in the field ! Why stand we here idle ? 
What is it that gentlemen wish ? What would they have ? 
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
price of chains and slavery i Forbid it, Almighty God ! I 
know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give 
me liberty, or give me death ! 






CXXIX.— THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 

GEORGE E. BADGER. 

The honorable gentleman from Michigan says, that he 
wishes, by the exhibition of a large force there, to produce 
" a great moral effect." How ? Why, he means to con- 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 1 i 5 

vince the Mexicans that they are unable to resist us. Well, 
•sir, if they are able to withstand the logic of such fields as 
Buena Vista, Churubusco, Contreras, and Cerro Gordo, think 
you, sir, that their incredulity will yield to the mere sight of 
a large body of men ? What, then, do you intend to do 
with this immense military force ? They are to take posses* 
sion and occupy the country, it is said. And when they are 
there, what great object is it intended that they should ac- 
complish, which this country desires to see accomplished ? 
Do we want peace ? Is it not obvious to every one that 
peace cannot in this way be obtained ? If peace could be 
coerced, we have done everything that genius can contrive, 
and skill and gallantry execute, to accomplish it. I believe 
it may be said, without exaggeration, that the history of no 
country has presented such a succession of brilliant military 
achievements as we have gained in Mexico. If chastisement 
— defeat— overpowering, overwhelming defeat, were sufficient 
to bring Mexico to a disposition for peace, she would have 
been brought to that disposition long ago. How, then, do 
you propose to accomplish it by your troops? Why, they 
are to take possession and occupy the whole country — or, as 
the Secretary of War says, to keep that portion of it which 
we have got, and occupy all the rest of which our means 
will allow us to take possession. Well, when you have got 
possession, what disposition of it do you propose to make ? 
Forts and fortifications, I suppose, are to be established every- 
where. You are to maintain all the strongholds of Mexico, 
and her valleys are to be everywhere marked by the signs of 
military occupation. How long is this state of things to con- 
tinue ? Until Mexico makes peace ! But, I pray you, is 
this the way in which the gentle sentiments of benevolence 
and peace are to be instilled into the Mexican bosom ? True, 
you may compel her to submit — you may prevent her from 
uttering a word of complaint — you may force her to feign 
compliance with your wishes — her active resentment may 
disappear — and yet a dogged spirit of revenge, and the in- 
tensest hate, will rankle and lurk beneath. 

If this be the tendency of that moral coercion, what may 
we hope from awe and terror ? Do we really expect, by re- 
newed conquest, by devastated fields, by captured villages, 
by stormed fortresses, by occupying such positions that no 
Mexican can look forth without beholding evidence of the 
fall of his country and the presence of her conqueror, that a 



176 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

true peace is to be restored ? Sir, no man should expect it 
What is the situation of Mexico at this moment ? She lies 
at your feet, bleeding, exhausted, panting. Do you wish to 
trample upon this enemy already in the dust ? Do you wish 
to crush the last remains of her vitality ? I hope not, sir ; 
but even if you do, you need not send this additional force. 



CXXX.— THE EMBARGO. 

JOSIAH QUINCY. 

When I enter on the subject of the Embargo, I am struck 
with wonder at the very threshold. I know not with what 
words to express my astonishment. At the time I departed 
from Massachusetts, if there was an impression, which I 
thought universal, it was, that, at the commencement of this 
session, an end would be put to this measure. The opinion 
was not so much, that it would be terminated, as that it was 
then at an end. Sir, the prevailing sentiment, according to 
my apprehension, was stronger than this — even that the pres- 
sure was so great, that it could not possibly be endured ; 
that it would soon be absolutely insupportable. And this 
opinion, as I then had reason to believe, was not confined to 
any one class, or description, or party ; that even those who 
were friends of the existing administration, and unwilling to 
abandon it, were yet satisfied, that a sufficient trial had been 
given to this measure. With these impressions I arrived in 
this city. I hear the incantations of the great enchanter 
I feel his spell. I see the legislative machinery begin to move 
The scene opens. And I am commanded to forget all my 
recollections, to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, to con- 
tradict what I have seen and heard, and felt. I hear, that 
all this discontent is mere party clamor — electioneering arti- 
fice ; that the people of New England are able and willing 
to endure this Embargo for an indefinite, unlimited period ; 
some say for six months ; some a year ; some two years. The 
gentleman from North Carolina told us, that he preferred 
three years of embargo to a war. And the gentleman from 
Virginia said expressly, that he hoped we should never allow 
our vessels to go upon the ocean again, until the orders and 
decrees of the belligerents were rescinded ; in plain English 



SORROW FOR THE DEAD. 177 

until France and Great Britain should, in their great condescen- 
sion, permit. Good heavens! Mr. Chairman, are men mad? 
Is this House touched with that insanity, which is the never- 
failing precursor of the intention of Heaven to destroy ? The 
people of New England, after eleven months' deprivation of 
the ocean, to be commanded still longer to abandon it, for an 
undefined period ; to hold their inalienable rights at the ten- 
ure of the will of Britain or of Bonaparte ! A people, com- 
mercial in all respects, in all their relations, in all their 
hopes, in all their recollections of the past, in all their pros- 
pects of the future ; a people, whose first love was the ocean, 
the choice of their childhood, the approbation of their manly 
years, the most precious inheritance of their fathers, in the 
midst of their success, in the moment of the most exquisite 
perception of commercial prosperity, to be commanded to 
abandon it, not for a time limited, but for a time unlimited ; 
not until they can be prepared to defend themselves there 
(for that is not pretended), but until their rivals recede from 
it ; not until their necessities require, but until foreign nations 
permit ! I am lost in astonishment, Mr. Chairman. I have 
not words to express the matchless absurdity of this at- 
tempt. I have no tongue to express the swift and headlong 
destruction, which a blind perseverance in such a system 
must bring upon this nation. 



CXXXL— SORROW FOR THE DEAD 

WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we 
refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal : 
every other affliction to forget ; but this wound we consider 
our duty to keep open ; this affliction we cherish and brood 
over in solitude. Where is the mother that would willingly 
forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, 
though every recollection is a pang ? Where is the child that 
would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to 
remember be but to lament ? who, even in the hour of agony, 
would forget the friend over whom he mourns ? who, even 
when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most 
ioved, and he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing 



178 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

of its portal, would accept consolation that was to be bought 
by frrgetfulness ? No, the love which survives the tomb is 
one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, 
it ]t»s likewise its delights ; and when the overwhelming 
bur«t of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, 
wh^n the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the 
present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into 
pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its lova : 
liness, who would root out. such a sorrow from the heart ? 
Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud even over 
the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the 
hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song 
of pleasure, or the burst of revelry ? No ; there is a voice 
from the tomb sweeter than song ; there is a recollection of 
the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the 
living. Oh, the grave ! — the grave ! It buries every error ; 
covers every defect ; extinguishes every resentment. From 
its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender 
recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an 
^nemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that even he should 
have Avarred with the poor handful of earth that lies mould- 
ering before him ! 

The grave of those we loved — what a place for meditation ! 
There it is that we call up in long review the whole history 
of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments 
avisheo/ upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of 
ntimacy ; there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the 
.olemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene ; the bed of death 
with all its stifled griefs ; its noiseless attendants ; its mute, 
watchful assiduities ; the last testimonies of expiring love ; the 
feeble, faltering, thrilling (oh ! how thrilling !) pressure of the 
hand ; the last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us 
even from the threshold of existence ; the faint, faltering 
accents struggling in death to give one more assurance of 
affection ! Aye, go to the grave of buried love, and meditate ! 
There settle the account with thy conscience for every past 
benefit unrequited, every past endearment unregarded, of that 
being who can never, never, never return to be soothed by thy 
contrition ! 

If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the 
soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate 
parent ; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond 
bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt 



PRICE OF LIBERTY. 1 79 

pne moment of thy kindness or thy truth ; if thou art a friend, 
and hast ever wronged in thought, word or deed, the spirit 
that generously confided in thee ; if thou art a lover, and hast 
ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart that now 
lies cold and still beneath thy feet ; then be sure that every 
unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, 
will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking 
dolefully at thy soul ; then be sure that thou wilt lie down 
sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard 
groan, and pour the unavailing tear ; more deep, more bitter, 
because unheard and unavailing. 

Then weave the chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties 
of nature about the srrave ; console thy broken spirit, if thou 
canst, with these teuder, yet futile tributes of regret ; but 
take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction 
over the dead, and be moiv faithful and affectionate in thy 
discharge of thy duties to the living. 



CXXXIL— PRICE OF LIBERTY. 

HENRY GILES. 

Liberty has directly occasioned a vast amount of suffering ; 
liberty of country, liberty of conscience, liberty of person. 
It has cost much endurance ; it has been bought with a great 
price. Trace it along the line of centuries ; mark the pris- 
ons where captives for it pined ; mark the graves to which 
victims for it went down despairing ; mark the fields whereon 
its heroes battled ; mark the seas whereon they fought ; mark 
the exile to which they fled ; mark the burned spots where 
those who w r ould not resist evil, gave up the ghost in torture, 
to vindicate the integrity of their souls ; add then open suffer- 
ings to those that have found no record ; imagine, if you can, 
the wdiole ; then you have the price, only in part, of liberty ; 
for liberty has cost more than all these. Is it value for 
the price ? Consult, if you are able, the purchaser w r ho paid 
it ; awaken from the prisons those who perished in them ; 
arouse from the graves the w T eary and broken-hearted by 
oppression; call from the fields of blood, the myriads who 
chose death rather than bonds ; invoke from the caverns of 
the deep, those whom the ocean swallowed in braving the 



130 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

invader ; summon back from exile those who sank unseen in 
savage wilds. Pray for those to come once more to earth, 
who bore testimony to the truth in agony ; you will have a 
host of witnesses which no man can number, who all, afore- 
time, and through manifold affliction, maintained, even unto 
death, the cause of Liberty. Inquire if they repent ; ask them 
if the boon which they have given us, was worth the suffer- 
ing with which they bought it ; ask, also, the speakers who 
proclaimed freedom, the thinkers who made laws for it, and 
the reformers who purified it, if the object for which they 
toiled, was worth the labor which they spent. That it was, 
all will exclaim with triumphant voice ; that it was, will come 
with one glad consent, with one sublime ameri, from this 
glorious company of apostles, this goodly fellowship of pro- 
phets, this noble army of martyrs. 



CXXXIIL— HOW TO GAIN AN HONORED NAME. 

ALBERT BARNES. 

You will ask me what field is open in this land where an 
honorable reputation may now be gained ? To this question, 
which a noble-hearted and ingenuous youth would ask, I 
would reply by saying, that in this country, at least, the whole 
field is still open. The measure of military reputation is 
indeed filled up, and the world will look hereafter with fewer 
smiles on the blood-stained hero than in days that are past. 
The time is coming, also, and is near at hand, when a man 
who attempts to defend his reputation by shedding the blood 
of another, will only exclude himself from all the expressions 
of approval and of confidence among men. Reputation is 
not to be gained, that will be of value, by brilliant verse, 
that shall unsettle the foundations of faith and hope ; that 
shall fill the soul with misanthropy, or that shall corrupt the 
heart by foul and offensive images. Sickening night-shades 
enough of this kind have already been culled, and twisted 
around the brows of those great in title or in talent. The 
sentiment has gone forth, not to be recalled, that he who is 
to be held in lasting, grateful remembrance, must base his 
claims on true virtue ; on tried patriotism ; on a generous 



THE POET. 181 

love of the species ; on the vindication of injured virtue ; on 
great plans to advance the permanent welfare of man. 

Do you ask what can be done here to secure an honored 
name ? I answer, the liberties of our land, bought with so 
invaluable blood, are to be defended, and transmitted in their 
purity, to other times — and he deserves a grateful remem- 
brance who contributes anything, by private virtue or public 
service, to such a result. Every office is open to any young 
American as the reward of service rendered to the country ; 
and there is not one in the gift of the people which may not 
be contemplated as possibly within the reach of any aspirant 
for a grateful remembrance. It is one of the glories of our 
system, that the path to the highest office is to be kept open 
to any one who may confer sufficient benefit on his country, 
to show that it may be a suitable recompense for public ser- 
vices. And no human tongue can tell what youth may yet 
enter on that high office, or in what humble cottage beyond 
the mountains the infant may now be sleeping that is yet to 
attain it. 



CXXXIY.— THE POET. 

RALPH W. EMERSON. 

Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, which must not, in its 
turn, arise and stand before the poet as exponent of his mean- 
ing. Doubt not, poet, but persist. Say, "It is in me, 
and shall out !" Stand then, balked and dumb, stuttering 
and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive until at 
last rage draw out of thee that dream power, which every 
night shows thee is thine own. Then indeed is thy genius 
no longer exhaustible. All creatures by pairs and by tribes, 
pour into thy mind as into a Noah's ark, to come forth again 
to people a new world. It is like the stock of air for respira- 
tion, not a measure of gallons, but the entire mighty atmos- 
phere. And therefore it is that Homer and Shakspeare and 
Raphael are exhaustless — resembling a mirror carried through 
the street, ready to render an image of every created object. 

Poet ! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, 
and not in castles or by sword-blades any longer. The con- 
ditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world and 
know the muse only. The time of towns is tolled from the 



182 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours 
are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, by 
growth of joy upon joy. Thou shalt lie close hid with na- 
ture, and cannot be afforded to the Capitol of Exchange. 
The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and 
this is thine ; thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long 
season. And this is the reward : that the ideal shall be real 
to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall 
like summer rain, copious but not troublesome, to thy invul- 
nerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy 
park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, with- 
out tax and without envy. The woods and rivers shalt thou 
own ; and thou shall possess that wherein others are only 
tenants and boarders. Thou true landlord ! sea lord ! air 
lord ! Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly — 
wherever day and night meet in twilight — wherever the blue 
heaven is hung by clouds, or sown by stars — wherever are 
forms with transparent boundaries — wherever are outlets into 
celestial space — wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there 
is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee. And thou 
shouldst walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find 
a condition inopportune or ignoble. 



CXXX V.— INJUSTICE THE CAUSE OF NATIONAL RUIN. 

THEODORE PARKER. 

Do you know how empires find their end ? Yes, the great 
states eat up the little ; as with fish, so with nations. Aye, 
but how do the great states come to an end ? By their own 
injustice, and no other cause. Come with me, my friends, 
come with me into the Inferno of the nations, with such 
poor guidance as my lamp can lend. Let us disquiet and 
bring up the awful shadows of empires buried long ago, and 
learn a lesson from the Tomb. 

Come, old Assyria, with the Ninevitish dove upon thy em- 
erald crown. What laid thee low ? "I fell by my own in- 
justice. Thereby Nineveh and Babylon came with me to 
the ground." Oh queenly Persia, flame of the nations, 
wherefore art thou so fallen, who troddest the people und.r 
thee, bridgedst the Hellespont with ships, and pouredst thy 



INJUSTICE TF1E CAUSE OF NATIONAL RUIN. 183 

temple- wasting millions on the western world ? " Because I 
trod the people under me, and bridged the Hellespont with 
ships, and poured my temple-wasting millions on the western 
world. I fell by my own misdeeds !" Thou, muselike. Gre- 
cian queen, fairest of all thy classic sisterhood of states, en- 
chanting yet the world with thy sweet witchery, speaking in 
art, and most seductive song, why liest thou there with the 
beauteous yet dishonored brow, reposing on thy broken harp ? 
11 1 scorned the law of God ; banished and poisoned wisest, 
justest men ; I loved the loveliness of flesh embalmed in Pa- 
rian stone ; I loved the loveliness of thought, and treasured 
that in more than Parian speech. But the beauty of justice, 
the loveliness of love, I trod them down to earth ! Lo, 
therefore, have I become as those Barbarian states — as one 
of them !" 

Oh manly, majestic Home, thy seven-fold mural crown 
all broken at thy feet, why art thou here ? 'T was not injustice 
brought thee low ; for thy Great Book of Law is prefaced 
with these words, Justice is the unchanging, everlasting will 
to give each man his flight ! " It was not the saint's ideal, 
it was the hypocrite's pretence ! I made iniquity my law. 
I trod the nations under me. Their wealth gilded my 
palaces, — where thou mayest see the fox and hear the owl, — 
it fed my courtiers and my courtezans. Wicked men were 
my cabinet councillors— the flatterer breathed his poison in 
rny ear. Millions of bondmen wet the soil with tears and 
V.ood. Do you not hear it crying yet to God ? Lo, here 
have I my recompense, tormented with such downfall as you 
see ! Go back and tell the new-born child, who sitteth on 
the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea, 
a crown of thirty stars above his youthful brow — tell him 
there are rights which States must keep, or they shall suffer 
wrongs. Tell him there is a God who keeps the black man 
and the white, and hurls to earth the loftiest realm that 
breaks His just, eternal law ! Warn the young empire that 
he come not down dim and dishonored to my shameful tomb ! 
Tell him that Justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to 
jive each man his Right. I knew it, broke it, and am lost. 
Bid him to keep it and be safe !" 



184 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



CXXX VI— SUPPOSED SPEECH AGAINST THE 
DECLARATION. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Let us pause ! This step, once taken, cannot be retraced. 
This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconcil- 
iation If success attend the arms of England, we shall 
then be no longer colonies, with charters, and with privi- 
leges ; these will all be forfeited by this act ; and we shall be 
iti the condition of other conquered people, at the mercy of 
the conquerors. For ourselves, we may be ready to run the 
hazard , but are we ready to carry the country to that length ? 
Is success so probable as to justify it ? Where is the mili- 
tary, where the naval power, by which we are to resist the 
whole strength of the arm of England, for she will exert 
that strength to the utmost ? Can we rely on the constancy 
and perseverance of the people ? or will they act, as the 
people of other countries have acted, and, wearied with a long 
war, submit in the end, to a worse oppression ? While we 
stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of grievances, 
we know we are right, and are not answerable for the conse- 
quences. Nothing, then, can be imputable to us. But if we 
now change our object, carry our pretensions further, and set 
up for absolute independence, we shall lose the sympathy of 
mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, 
but struggling for something which we never did possess, and 
which we have solemnly and uniformly di-dained all inten- 
tion of pursuing, from the very outset of the troubles. Aban- 
doning thus our old ground, of resistance only to arbitrary 
acts of oppression, the nations will believe the whole to have 
been mere pretence, and they will look on us, not as injured, 
but as ambitious subjects. I shudder, before this responsi- 
bility. It will be on us, if relinquishing the ground we have 
stood on so long, and stood on so safely, we now proclaim in- 
dependence, and carry on the war for that object, while 
these cities burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach 
with the bones of their owners, and these streams run blood. It 
will be upon us, it will be upon us, if failing to maintain this 
unseasonable and ill-judged declaration, a sterner despotism, 
maintained by military power, shall be established over our 
posterity, when we ourselves, given up by an exhausted, a 
harassed, a misled people, shall have expiated our rashness 
and atoned for our presumption, on the scaffold. 



SUPPOSED SPEECH OF ADAMS IN REPLY. 185 



CXXXVII— SUPPOSED SPEECH OF ADAMS IN REPLY. 

DANIEL "WEBSTER. 

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish. I give my hand 
and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the be- 
ginning, we aimed not at independence. But there's a Di- 
vinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has 
driven us to arms ; and, blinded to her own interest for our 
good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now 
within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it 
is ours. Why then should we defer the declaration ? Is 
any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with 
England, which shall leave either safety to the country and 
its liberties, or safety to his own life, and his own honor ? 
Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he our venerable 
colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed 
and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance ? 
Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what 
can you be, while the power of England remains, but out- 
laws ? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry 
on, or to give up the war ? Do we mean to submit to the 
measures of Parliament, Boston port-bill and all ? Do we 
mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be 
ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden 
down into dust ? I know we do not mean to submit. We 
never shall submit. The war then must go on. We must 
fight it through. And if the war must go qn, why put off 
longer the Declaration of Independence ? That measure will 
strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. If we fail, 
it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The 
cause will raise up armies, the cause will create navies. The 
people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and 
will carry themselves, gloriously, through this struggle. Sir, 
the declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. 
Read this declaration at the head of the army ; every sword 
will be draw r n from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered 
to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it 
from the pulpit ; religion will approve it, and the love of reli- 
gious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it, or 
fall with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it there ; 
let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's can- 
hol. ; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons 



156 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexing- 
ton and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its 
support. 

Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, hut I see, I 
see clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, 
may rue it. We may not live to the time, when this decla- 
ration shall he made good. We may die ; die, colonists ; die, 
slaves ; die, it may be, ignominiously, and on the scaffold. 
Be it so. Be it so. But if it be the pleasure of heaven that 
my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the vic- 
tim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come 
when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a 
country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free 
country. Whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, 
that this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it 
may cost blood ; but it will stand, and it will richly compen- 
sate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present. I see 
the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall 
make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our 
graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it,* 
with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illumi- 
nations. On its annual return they will shed tears, copious, 
gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and 
distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy. Sir, 
before God, I believe the hour has come. My judgment ap- 
proves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I 
have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I 
am now ready here to stake upon it ; and I leave off, as I 
began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the decla- 
ration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God 
it shall be my dying sentiment; independence, now; and 



CXXXVIIL— SOCIETY WITHOUT MORALITY. 

LYMAN BEECHER. 

The mass is changing. We are becoming another people. 
Our habits have held us, long after those moral causes which 
formed them have in a great degree ceased to operate. These 
habits, at length, are giving way. So many hands have so 



EMBASSY TO ROME. 187 

long been employed to pull away foundations, and so few to 
repair the breaches, that the building totters. So much en- 
terprise has been displayed in removing obstructions from the 
current of human depravity, and so little to restore them, 
that the stream at length is beginning to run. It may be 
stopped now, but it will soon become deep, and broad, and 
rapid, and irresistible. 

The crisis then has come. By the people of this gener- 
ation, by ourselves probably, the amazing question is to be 
decided, whether the inheritance of our fathers shall be pre- 
served, or thrown away — whether our Sabbaths shall be a 
delight, or a loathing — whether the taverns on that holy day, 
shall be crowded with drunkards, or the sanctuary of God 
with humble worshippers — whether riot and profanity shall 
fill our streets, and poverty our dwellings, and convicts our 
jails, and violence our land ; or whether industry, and tem- 
perance, and righteousness, shall be the stability of our times 
— whether mild laws shall receive the cheerful submission of 
freemen, or the iron rod of a tyrant compel the trembling 
homage of slaves. Be not deceived. Human nature in this 
nation is like human nature everywhere. All actual differ- 
ence in our favor is adventitious, and the result of our laws, 
institutions and habits. It is a moral influence which, with 
the blessing of God, has formed a state of society so eminently 
desirable. The same influence which has formed it, is indis- 
pensable to its preservation. The rocks and hills of New 
England will remain till the last conflagration ; but, let the 
Sabbath be profaned with impunity, the worship of God be 
abandoned, the government and religious instruction of chil- 
dren be neglected, the streams of intemperance be permitted 
to flow, and her glory will depart. The wall of fire will no 
more surround her, and the munition of rocks will no longer 
be her defence. 



CXXXIX.— EMBASSY TO ROME. 

LEWIS C. LEVIN. 

Sympathy with Pope Pius IX. appears to be the hobby- 
horse of political leaders. O'Connell, the Irish reformer, is 
dead. The curtain has fallen upon the last act of the na- 



188 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

tional farce, and now the Pope, an Italian reformer, steus 
upon the stage to conclude what O'Connell left unfinished. 
The hurrah has gone through the country ; public meetings 
ha^e been held ; sympathy for the Pope has grown almost 
into a fashion : yet, sir, in no legitimate sense can this em- 
bassy to Rome be called a national measure, intended for the 
public benefit. We have no commerce to protect in the Ro- 
man States ; we have no seamen whose rights may need 
even the supervision of a government agent or consul ; we 
have no navy riding in her only harbor ; we have no inter- 
ests that may be exposed to jeopardy for want of an ambas- 
sador. 

The Papal flag has never been known to wave in an Amer- 
ican port. No American vessel has received the visit of a 
Pope. Dwelling under the shadow of the ruins of antiquity, 
they have never disturbed us, save by the bulls of Pope Greg- 
ory and the intrigues of his Jesuits. What, then, has pro- 
duced this sudden revolution in the concerns of the two coun- 
tries ? We are told that Pius IX. is a reformer. Indeed f 
In what sense is he a reformer ? Has he divested himself 
of any of his absolute prerogatives ? Has he cast off his 
claims to infallibility ? Has he flung aside his triple crown ? 
Has he become a republican ? Has he emancipated his peo- 
ple ? Has he suppressed the Jesuits ? Far from it. Noth- 
ing of this has been done. He maintains his own preroga- 
tives as absolute as Gregory XIX., or any other of his illus- 
trious predecessors. In what, then, does the world give him 
credit for being a reformer ? For building up a new and 
firmer foundation to his own secular and hierarchical power ; 
for permitting a press to be established in Rome, under his 
own supervision and control ; for carrying out measures not 
to be censured, but certainly giving him no pretensions be- 
yond that of a selfish sagacity, intent on the study of all 
means calculated to add stability to his spiritual power, and 
firmness to his temporal throne. 

But, it is said, if Rome will not come to America, Ameri- 
ca must go to Rome ! This is the new doctrine of an age of 
retrogressive progress. If the Pope will not establish a re- 
public for his Italian subjects, we, the American people, 
must renounce all the ties of our glorious freedom, and en- 
dorse the Papal system as the perfection of human wisdom, 
by sending an amdassador to Rome to congratulate " His 
Holiness" on having made — what ? The Roman people 



CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES. 189 

free ? Oh ! no ; but on having made tyranny amiable ; in 
having sugared the poisoned cake. And ibr this, the highest 
crime against freedom, we are to commission an ambassador 
to Rome ! Is there an American heart that does not recoil 
from the utter degradation of the scheme ? Sir, in the 
name of the American people, I protest against this innova- 
tion, which would make us a by-word among the nations. 



CXL.— CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES. 

W. L. DAYTON. 

I have some confidence — an abiding hope, at least — that 
we have seen the end of this wretched war. I trust that 
the flag of my country will never again be red with Mexican 
blood. The gallantry of our troops has carried it through 
smoke and fire from the coast to the capital — from the waters 
of the G-ulf to the very halls of the Aziec. There, then, let 
it rest ; may not a breath of human passion ever again open 
one fold on a Mexican battle-field. 1 know not how recent 
events in the European world may have affected the minds 
of other men, but, for myself, I feel that, at this strange junc- 
ture in the world's progress, America, the great moving 
cause and example, should be at rest. In peace there is at 
this moment to us a peculiar, a moral fitness. If one half 
that we hear be true, an intense interest must soon attach 
itself to us and to our institutions. We are soon to become 
the cynosure of all eyes, ''the observed of ail observers" 
among nations. Consider well, I pray you, the spectacle 
that we now present, as the great model republic, preying 
upon, grinding to powder a weak, helpless, an almost only 
sister republic. But, sir, it is not only fit in a moral point 
of view that we should be at peace, but prudential considera- 
tions counsel us to the same course. The atmosphere of the 
old world is portentous of change ; her air is thick and 
murky ; the clouds are lurid ; nations, like men, are literally 
holding their breath in momentary expectation of the burst 
which may follow. I tell you, sir, that you have not yet 
seen even the beginning of the end. I tell you that nations 
and kingdoms which are the growth of ages, do not go out 
without a struggle, nor in a day. I tell you that large 



190 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

classes of men, concentrating vast wealth, born to power 
and dominion, do not abandon their supposed destiny as a 
thing of yesterday. What though a king be stricken down! 
What though the sons of a king fall away, like leaves from 
the oak that is blasted ; still the great problem remains, can 
thirty millions of mercurial Frenchmen, of whom about six 
or seven millions only can read and write, with no knowledge 
of free institutions, no experience in the elective franchise — 
can they be made in a day, an hour, the safe depository of 
sovereign power ? Sir, I distrust the future ; it rises before 
my mind's eye black with anarchy, red with blood. Even 
although the nations of Europe stand aloof, yet the excited 
material in France herself may burst into flame, though 
chafed by nothing save the friction of its own parts. Should 
this be so, the old world will spring to its arms in a day. In 
the dreadful struggle which must follow, it becomes this Re- 
public to stand " at guard." Let her gather in her resour- 
ces ; let her husband her strength ; let her stand calm, fixed, 
unmoved, as the main land when the distant swell rolls in 
upon it. 



CXLL— THE PURITANS. 

EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 

The Puritans — there is a charm in that word which will 
never be lost on a New England ear. It is closely associated 
with all that is great in New England history. It is hal- 
lowed by a thousand memories of obstacles overthrown, of 
dangers nobly braved, of sufferings unshrinkingly borne, in the 
service of freedom and religion. It kindles at once the pride 
of ancestry, and inspires the deepest feelings of national 
veneration. It points to examples of valor in all its modes 
of manifestation, — in the hall of debate, on the field of 
battle, before the tribunal of power, at the martyr's stake. 
It is a name which will never die out of New England 
hearts. Wherever virtue resists temptation, wherever men 
meet death for religion's sake, wherever the gilded baseness 
of the world stands abashed before conscientious principles, 
there will be the spirit of the Puritans. They have left 
deep and broad marks of their influence on human society. 
Their children, in all times, will rise up and call them 



THE DEMAGOGUE. 191 

blessed. A thousand witnesses of their courage, their indus« 
try, their sagacity, their invincible perseverance in well- 
doing, their love of free institutions, their respect for justice, 
their hatred of wrong, are all around us, and bear grateful 
evidence daily to their memory. We cannot forget them, 
even if we had sufficient baseness to wish it. Every spot 
of New England earth has a story to tell of them ; every 
cherished institution of New England society bears the print 
of their minds. The strongest element of New England 
character has been transmitted with their blood. So intense 
is our sense of affiliation with their nature, that we speak of 
them universally as our " fathers." And though their fame 
everywhere else were weighed down with calumny and 
hatred, though the principles for which they contended, and 
the noble deeds they performed, should become the scoff of 
sycophants and oppressors, and be blackened by the smooth 
falsehoods of the selfish and the cold, there never will be 
wanting hearts in New England to kindle at their virtues, 
nor tongues and pens to vindicate their name. 



CXLIL— THE DEMAGOGUE. 

HENRY W. BEECHER. 

The lowest of politicians is that man who seeks to gratify 
an invariable selfishness by pretending to seek the public 
good. For a profitable popularity he accommodates himself to 
all opinions, to all dispositions, to every side, and to each pre- 
judice. He is a mirror, with no face of his own, but a smooth 
surface from which each man of- ten thousand mav see him- 
self reflected. He glides from man to man, coinciding with 
their views, pretending their feelings, stimulating their tastes ; 
with this one, he hates a man ; with that one he loves the 
same man ; he favors a law, and he dislikes it ; he approves, 
and opposes ; he is on both sides at once, and seemingly 
wishes that he could be on one side mere than on both sides. 
He attends meetings to suppress intemperance, — but at elec- 
tions makes every grog-shop free to all drinkers. He can 
with equal relish plead most eloquently for temperance, or 
toss off a dozen glasses in a dirty grocery. He thinks that 
there is a time for everything, and therefore, at one time he 



192 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

swears and jeers and leers with a carousing crew ; and at 
another time, having happily been converted, he displays the 
various features of devotion. Indeed he is a capacious Chris- 
tian ; an epitome of faith. He piously asks the class-leader, 
of the welfare of his charge, for he was always a Methodist, 
and always shall be, — until he meets a Presbyterian ; then 
he is a Presbyterian, old-school or new, as the case requires. 
However, as he is not a bigot, he can afford to be a Baptist, 
in a good Baptist neighborhood, and with a wink he tells the 
zealous elder, that he never had one of his children baptized, 
not he ! He whispers to the Reformer that he abhors all 
creeds but baptism and the Bible. After all this, room will 
be found in his heart for the fugitive sects also, which come 
and go like clouds in a summer sky. His flattering attention 
at church edifies the simple-hearted preacher, who admires 
that a plain sermon should make a man whisper amen ! and 
weep. Upon the stump his tact is no less rare. He roars 
and bawls with courageous plainness, on points about which 
all agree ; but on subjects where men differ, his meaning is 
nicely balanced on a pivot that it may dip either way. 



CXLIIL— EULOGY ON JOHN Q. ADAMS. 

ISAAC C. HOLMES. 

The mingled tones of sorrow, like the voice of many waters, 
have come unto us from a sister State — Massachusetts weep- 
ing for her honored son. The State I have the honor to rep- 
resent once endured, with yours, a common suffering, battied 
for a common cause, and rejoiced in a common triumph. 
Surely, then, it is meet that in this, the day of your affliction, 
we should mingle our griefs. 

When a great man falls, the nation mourns ; when a pa- 
triarch is removed, the people weep. Ours, my associates, is 
no common bereavement. The chain which linked our 
hearts with the gifted spirits of former times, has been rudely 
snapped. The lips from which flowed those living and glo- 
rious truths that our fathers uttered, are closed in death ! Yes, 
my friends, Death has been among us ! He has not entered 
the cottage of some unknown, ignoble peasant ; he has 
knocked audibly at the palace of a nation ! His footstep has 



EULOGY ON JOHN Q. ADAMS. 193 

been heard in the Hall of State ! He has cloven down his 
victim in the midst of the councils of a people ! He has 
borne in triumph from among you the gravest, wisest, most 
reverend head ! Ah ! he has taken him as a trophy who 
was once chief over many States, adorned with virtue, and 
learning, and truth ; he has borne upon bis chariot wheels a 
renowned one of the earth. 

There was no incident in the birth, the life, the death of 
Mr. Adams, not intimately woven with the history of the 
land. Born in the night of his country's tribulation, he heard 
the first murmurs of discontent ; he saw the first efforts for 
deliverance. Whilst yet a little child, he listened with 
eagerness to the whispers of freedom as they breathed from 
the lips of her almost inspired apostles ; he caught the fire 
that was then kindled ; his eye beamed with the first ray ; 
he watched the dayspring from on high, and long before he 
departed from earth, it was graciously vouchsafed unto him 
to behold the effulgence of her noontide glory. 

He disrobed himself with dignity of the vestures of office, 
not to retire to the shades of (iuincy, but in the maturity of 
his intellect, in the vigor of his thought, to leap into this 
arena, and to continue as he had begun, a disciple, an ardent 
devotee at the temple of his country's freedom. How, in 
this department, he ministered to his country's wants, we all 
know, and have witnessed. How often we have crowded into 
that aisle, and clustered around that now vacant desk, to listen 
to the counsels of wisdom, as they fell from the lips of the 
venerable sage, we can all remember, for it was but of yes- 
terday. But what a change ! How wondrous ! how sudden ! 
'Tis like a vision of the night ! That form which we beheld 
but a few days since, is now cold in death ! But the last 
Sabbath, and in this hall, he worshipped with others. Now 
his spirit mingles with the noble army of martyrs, and the 
just made perfect, in the eternal adoration of the living God. 
With him " this is the end of earth." He sleeps the sleep 
that knows no waking. He is gone — and forever ! The sun 
that ushers in the morn of the next holy day, while it gilds 
the lofty dome of the capitol, shall rest with soft and mellow 
light upon the consecrated spot beneath whose turf forever 
lies the patriot father and the patriot sage ! 

9 



194 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



CXLIV.— THE LEVELLING SYSTEM. 

LYMAN BEECHER. 

If you think that this crisis cannot come on our country, 
you have not studied the constitution of society, the char- 
acter of man, the past history of moral causes, or the exist- 
ing signs of the times. You have not read the glowing 
pages of specious argument, of powerful eloquence, of spirit- 
stirring indignation — pouring adventitious action upon the 
fever of the brain, and the madness of the heart. 

Hear these Catilines harangue their troops, in the five hun- 
dred thousand grog-shops of this nation — the temples and in- 
spiration of atheistic worship : — " Comrades, patriots, friends, 
— The time has come. Long have you suffered, and deep- 
ly, and in all sorts of ways. Property has been denied 
you, that others might roll in splendor ; and toil imposed, that 
they might inherit ease ; and poverty inflicted, that they 
might be blessed with more than heart could wish ; and to 
add ignominy to fraud, and persecution to insult, your names 
are cast out as evil. You snatch the crumbs from their 
table, and they call it stealing ; the momentary alleviation 
of your woes by stimulus, drunkenness ; and your intercourse 
as freeborn animals, is branded with outlawry and burning 
shame ; and all this by that intolerant aristocracy of wealth, 
religion, and law. You are miserable, and you are oppressed ; 
but you hold in your own hand the power of redress. Those 
splendid dwellings, and glittering equipages — those cultivated 
farms and cattle on a thousand hills — those barns bursting 
out with all manner of plenty — those voluptuous cities, and 
stores, crowded with merchandise — and boats and ships tran- 
sporting wealth — and those banks and vaults of gold — are 
yours. You are the people — numbers are with you. Rise, 
freemen — rise — to the polls — to the polls — and all is yours." 

It is true, this levelling system would destroy the industry 
of the world. It would augment the number, and aggravate 
the poverty of the poor, as it would expel the arts, banish 
commerce, stop the plough, and shut up the workshop, and 
send back the ruined race to skins, and bows, and arrows. 
But what is all this to a short-sighted, infuriated population, 
who know only that they are miserable, and feel that all 
above them is invidious distinction and crime ; and that to 
rise, it is only necessary to grasp the pillars of society, and 



SPIRIT OF LIBERTY IN 1772. 195 

pull it down ? Is there no treason in breathing such doc 
trines upon the ear of discontented millions ? It is throwing 
fire-brands into a magazine. 



CXLV.— SPIRIT OF LIBERTY IX 1772. 

JOSEPH WARREN". 

You have, my friends and countrymen, frustrated the de- 
signs of your enemies, by your unanimity and fortitude : it 
was your union and determined spirit which expelled those 
troops, who polluted your streets with innocent blood. You 
have appointed this anniversary as a standard memorial of 
the bloody consequences of placing an armed force in a popu- 
lous city, and of your deliverance from the dangers which 
then seemed to hang over your heads ; and I am confident 
that you will never betray the least want of spirit when 
called upon to guard your freedom. None but they who set 
a just value upon the blessings of liberty, are worthy to en- 
joy her — your illustrious fathers were her zealous votaries — 
when the blasting frowns of tyranny drove her from public 
view, they clasped her in their arms ; they cherished her in 
their generous bosoms ; they brought her safe over the rough 
ocean, and fixed her seat in this then dreary wilderness ; they 
nursed her infant age with the most tender care ; for her 
sake, they patiently bore the severest hardships ; for her sup- 
port, they underwent the most rugged toils ; in her defence, 
they boldly encountered the most alarming daiigers ; neither 
the ravenous beasts that ranged the woods for prey, nor the 
more furious savages of the wilderness, could damp their ar- 
dor ! Whilst with one hand they broke the stubborn glebe, 
with the other they grasped their weapons, ever ready to 
protect her from danger. No sacrifice, not even their own 
blood, was esteemed too rich a libation for her altar ! God 
prospered their valor ; they preserved her brilliancy unsullied ; 
they enjoyed her whilst they lived, and dying, bequeathed 
the dear inheritance to your care. And as they left you this 
glorious legacy, they have undoubtedly transmitted to you 
some portion of their noble spirit, to inspire you with the 
virtue to merit her, and courage to preserve her. You sure- 
ly cannot with such examples before your eyes, as every 



196 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

page of the history of this country affords, suffer your liber* 
ties to be ravished from you by lawless force, or cajoled 
away by flattery and fraud. 



CXLVI— ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE. 

JOSEPH WARREN. 

Approach we then the melancholy walk of death. Hither 
let me call the gay companion ; here let me drop a farewell 
tear upon that body which so late he saw vigorous and warm 
with social mirth ; hither let me lead the tender mother to 
weep over her beloved son — come, widowed mourner, here 
satiate thy grief; behold thy murdered husband gasping on 
the ground, and to complete the pompous show of wretched- 
ness, bring in each hand thy infant children to bewail their 
father's fate — take heed, ye orphan babes, lest, whilst your 
streaming eyes are fixed upon the ghastly corpse, your feet 
slide on the stones bespattered with your father's brains ! 
Enough ; this tragedy need not be heightened by an infant 
weltering in the blood of him that gave it birth. Nature 
reluctant, shrinks already from the view, and the chilled 
blood rolls slowly backward to its fountain. We wildly stare 
about, and with amazement ask, who spread this ruin about 
us ? What wretch has dared deface the image of his God ? 
Has haughty France or cruel Spain sent forth her myrmi- 
dons ? Has the grim savage rushed again from the far dis- 
tant wilderness ; or does some fiend, fierce from the depth 
of hell, with all the rancorous malice which the apostate 
damned can feel, twang her destructive bow, and hurl hor 
deadly arrows at our breasts ? No, none of these — but, how 
astonishing ! it is the hand of Britain that inflicts the wound ! 
The arms of George, our rightful king, have been employed 
to shed that blood, when justice, or the honor of his crown, 
had called his subjects to the field. 

But pity, grief, astonishment, with all the soft movements 
of the soul, must now give way to stronger passions. Say, 
fellow-citizens, what dreadful thought now swells your 
heavy bosoms ; you fly to arms — sharp indignation flashes 
from each eye — revenge gnashes her iron teeth — death grins 






MEN WHO NEVER DIE. 197 

a hideous smile, secure to drench his greedy jaws in human 
gore — whilst hovering furies darken all the air ! 

But stop, my bold adventurous countrymen ; stain not your 
weapons with the blood of Britons. Attend to reason's 
voice ; humanity puts in her claim, and sues to be again ad- 
mitted to her wonted seat, the bosom of the brave. Revenge 
is far beneath the noble mind. Many, perhaps, compelled to 
rank among the vile assassins, do from their inmost souls, de- 
test the barbarous action. The winged death, shot from 
your arms, may chance to pierce some breast that bleeds al- 
ready for your injured country. 



CXLVIL— MEN WHO NEVER DIE. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

We dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and 
death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in 
them, can never be forgotten. I had almost said that they 
are now beginning to live ; to live that life of unimpaired 
influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for 
which their talents and services were destined. Such men 
do not, cannot die. To be cold and breathless ; to feel not 
and speak not ; this is not the end of existence to the men 
who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their 
country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of 
the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the chan- 
nels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the 
sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead ? Can you not 
still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant 
heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplen- 
dent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon 
his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye ? Tell me, ye 
who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is 
Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house ? 
That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. 
The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, 
motionless ; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed ; 
but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained 
it, and which alone, to such men, " make it life to live/' these 
cannot expire ; — 



198 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

" These shall resist the empire of decay, 
When time is o'er and worlds have passed away; 
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie, 
But that which warmed it once can never die." 



CXLVIII.— LITERARY POSITION OF AMERICA. 

JOSEPH STORY. 

To us, Americans, nothing, indeed, can, or ought to be in- 
different, that respects the cause of science and literature. 
We have taken a stand among the nations of the earth, and 
have successfully asserted our claim to political equality. We 
possess an enviable elevation, so far as concerns the structure 
of our government, our political policy, and the moral energy 
of our institutions. If we are not without rivals in these 
respects, we are hardly behind any, even in the general esti- 
mate of foreign nations themselves. But our claim's are far 
more extensive. We assert an equality of voice and vote in 
the republic of letters, and assume for ourselves the right to 
decide on the merits of others, as well as to vindicate our 
own. These are lofty pretensions, which are never conceded 
without proofs, and are severely scrutinized, and slowly ad- 
mitted by the grave judges in the tribunal of letters. We 
have not placed ourselves as humble aspirants, seeking our 
way to higher rewards under the guardianship of experienced 
guides. We ask admission into the temple of fame, as joint 
heirs of the inheritance, capable in the manhood of our 
strength of maintaining our title. We contend for prizes 
with nations whose intellectual glory has received the homage 
of centuries. France, Italy, Germany, England, can point to 
the past for monuments of their genius and skill, and to the 
present with the undismayed confidence of veterans. It is 
not for us to retire from the ground which we have chosen to 
occupy, nor to shut our eyes against the difficulties of main- 
taining it. It is not by a few vain boasts, or vainer self-com- 
placency, or rash daring, that we are to win our way to the 
first literary distinction. We must do as others have done 
before us. We must serve in the hard school of discipline ; 
we must invigorate our powers by the studies of other times. 
We must guide our footsteps by those stars which have shone, 
and still continue to shine, with inextinguishable light in the 



WHEN WAR SHALL BE NO MORE. 199 

firmament of learning. Nor have we any reason for de- 
spondency. There is that in American character which hag 
never yet been found unequal to its purpose. There is that 
in American enterprise, which shrinks not, and faints not, 
and fails not in its labors. We may say with honest pride, 

11 Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, 
And souls are ripened in our northern sky." 

We may not then shrink from a rigorous examination of 
our own deficiencies in science and literature. If we have 
but a just sense of our wants, w r e have gained half the vic- 
tory. If we but face our difficulties, they will fly before us. 
We have solid claims upon the affection and respect of man- 
kind. Let us not jeopard them by a false shame, or an 
ostentatious pride. 



CXLIX.— WHEN" WAR SHALL BE NO MORE. 

ANONYMOUS. 

Death shall hereafter work alone and single-handed, un- 
aided by his most terrible auxiliary. The world shall repose 
in quiet. Far down the vista of futurity the tribes of human 
kind are seen mingling in fraternal harmony, wondering and 
shuddering as they read of former brutality, and exulting at 
their own more fortunate lot. They turn their grateful eyes 
upon us. Their countenances are not suffused with tears, 
nor streaked with kindred blood. We hear their voices ; 
they are not swelling with tones of general wailing and de- 
spair. We look at their smiling fields, undevastated by the 
band of rapine ; they are Avaving with yellow harvests, or 
loaded with golden fruits : and their sunny pastures are filled 
with quiet herds, which have never known the wanton rav- 
age of war. We turn to the peaceful homes where our in- 
fancy has been cradled ; they stand undespoiled by the hand 
of the destroyer. The scenes where we indulged our childish 
sports have never been profaned by hostile feet ; and the tall 
groves, where w 7 e performed our feats of school-boy dexterity, 
have never been desecrated to obtain the implements of hu- 
man destruction. Then our thoughts extend and embrace 
the land of our birth, the institutions and laws we so much 



200 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

venerate, and something whispers us they shall endure for- 
ever ; that all time shall witness their increasing perfection , 
that all nations shall copy from its example, and derive inter- 
minahle benefits from its influence ; for war, the destroyer of 
every valuable institution, the great and sole cause of all 
national ruin, is soon to be seen no more forever. 



CL.— A PICTURE OF TERROR. 

THOMAS C. UPHAM. 

At the dreadful period of the French Revolution, it was 
found that the glittering sword of war could strike upward, 
as well as downward ; among the high and the mighty, as 
well as among the poor and powerless peasants. The scythe 
fell upon the neck of princes ; those who had been clothed 
in purple and fine linen, were arrayed in beggar's rags and 
ate their crumbs in a dungeon ; the innocent children died 
with the guilty fathers ; delicate women, the delight of their 
friends and the ruling star of palaces, were smitten by the 
hand of the destroyer, and bowed their heads in blood. And 
there were beheld the hundred guillotines, the horrid inven- 
tion of the fusillades, the drownings in the Loire, the dread- 
ful devastations of La Vendee, the gathering of armies on the 
plains of Italy, the bridge of Lodi, and the battle of Ma- 
rengo. 

These were the beginnings of terrors, the opening of the 
incipient seal ; but the end was not yet. For twenty suc- 
cessive years, the apocalypse of the book of war opened itself 
from one end of Europe to the other, and on the ocean as 
well as on the land, in the thunders and fires which at once 
shook, and enlightened, and awed the world, of the Nile and 
Trafalgar, of Jena and Austerlitz, together with the dashing 
of throne against throne, and of nation against nation. At 
length the "white horse of death" was seen taking his way 
through the centre of Europe, and power was given him to 
kill with the sword and with hunger ; and he was followed 
by " the beasts of the earth," an army of five hundred soldiers, 
and they were all offered up as victims on the frozen fields 
of Russia ; and the Kremlin, and the ancient and mighty 
city of Moscow, were burnt upon their funeral pyre. The 



STOPPING THE MARCH OF FREEDOM. 201 

earth shook to its centre ; a howling and a lamentation went 
up to heaven ; the living ate the dead, and then fed upon 
their own flesh, and then went mad ; the wolves and the 
vultures held their carnival, while Rachel wept for her chil- 
dren, and would not be comforted. Nevertheless, the sickle 
of the destroyer was again thrust among the clusters ; the 
wine-press of war was trodden at Dresden, and Leipsic, and 
Waterloo, till the blood "came out of the wine-press, even to 
the horse-bridles." 



CLI.— STOPPING THE MAROH OF FREEDOM. 

THEODORE PARKER. 

It is not for men long to hinder the march of human free- 
dom. I have no fear for that ultimately ; none at all— sim- 
ply for this reason : that I believe in the infinite God. You 
may make your statutes ; an appeal always lies to the higher 
law, and decisions adverse to that get set aside in the ages. 
Your statutes cannot hold Him. Y"ou may gather all the 
dried grass and all the straw in both continents ; you may 
braid it into ropes to bind down the sea ; while it is calm, 
you may laugh, and say, " Lo, I have chained the ocean !" 
and howl down the law of Him who holds the universe as a 
rose-bud in his hand — its every ocean but a drop of dew. 
" How the waters suppress their agitation," you may say. 
But when the winds blow their trumpets, the sea rises in his 
strength, snaps asunder the bonds that had confined his 
mighty lirnbs, and the world is littered with the idle hay ! 
Stop the human race in its development and march to Free- 
dom ! As well might the boys of Boston, some lustrous 
night, mounting the steeples of the town, call on the stars to 
stop their course ! Gently, but irresistibly, the Greater and 
the Lesser Bear move round the pole ; Orion, in his mighty 
mail, comes up the sky ; the Bull, the Heavenly Twins, the 
Crab, the Lion, the Maid, the Scales, and all that shining 
company, pursue their march all night, and the new day dis- 
covers the idle urchins in their lofty places ail tired, and 
sleepy, and ashamed. 

9* 



202 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

CLIL— INVECTIVE IN THE " WILKINSON TRIAL." 

S. S. PRENTISS. 

Gentlemen, although my clients are free from the charge 
of shedding blood, there is a murderer, and, strange to say, 
his name appears upon the indictment, not as a criminal, but 
a prosecutor. His garments are wet with the blood of those 
upon whose deaths you hold this solemn inquest. Yonder he 
sits, allaying for a moment the hunger of that fierce vulture, 
Conscience, by casting before it the food of pretended regret, 
and false, but apparent eagerness for justice. He hopes to 
appease the manes of his slaughtered victims— victims to 
his falsehood and treachery — by sacrificing upon their graves 
a hecatomb of innocent men. By base misrepresentations 
of the conduct of the defendants, he induced his imprudent 
friends to attempt a vindication of his pretended wrongs, by 
violence and bloodshed. His clansmen gathered at his call, 
and followed him for vengeance ; but when the fight began, 
and the keen weapons clashed in the sharp conflict — where 
was the wordy warrior ? Aye, " where was Roderick then ?" 
No " blast upon his bugle horn" encouraged his companions 
as they were laying down their lives in his quarrel ; no gleam 
of his dagger indicated a desire to avenge his fall ; with 
treacherous cowardice he left them to their fate, and all his 
vaunted courage ended in ignominious flight. 

Sad and gloomy is the path that lies before him. You 
will in a few moments dash, un tasted, from his lips, the 
sweet cup of revenge ; to quaff whose intoxicating contents 
he has paid a price that would have purchased the goblet of 
the Egyptian queen. I behold gathering around him, thick 
and fist, dark and corroding cares. That face, which looks 
so ruddy, and even now is flushed with shame and conscious 
guilt, will from this day grow pale, until the craven blood 
shall refuse to visit the ha/gard cheek. In his broken and 
distorted sleep his dreams will be more fearful than those of 
the " false, perjured Clarence ;" and around his waking pil- 
low, in the deep hour of night, will flit the ghosts of Meeks 
and Roth well, shrieking their curses in his shrinking ear. 

Upon his head rests not only the blood shed in this unfor- 
tunate strife, but also the soul-killing crime of perjury ; for, 
surely as he lives, did the words of craft and falsehood fall 
from his lips, ere they were hardly loosened from the holy 



THE WORLD OF BEAUTY AROUND US. 203 

volume. But I dismiss him, and do consign him to the 
furies, trusting, in all charity, that the terrible punishment 
he must suffer from the scorpion-lash of a guilty conscienct 
will be considered in his last account. 



CLIIL— THE WORLD OF BEAUTY AROUND US. 

HORACE MANX. 

But a higher and holier world than the world of Ideas, or 
the world of Beauty, lies around us ; and we find ourselves 
endued with susceptibilities which affiliate us to all its purity 
and its perfectness. The laws of natuTe are sublime, but 
there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelli- 
gences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds 
blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, meas- 
ure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever- flowing 
time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivi- 
fies and paints ; the laws which preside over the subtle com- 
binations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electri- 
city ; the laws of germination and production in the vegeta- 
ble and animal worlds ; — all these, radiant with eternal 
beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of 
sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that ap- 
parel the universe in their celestial light. The heart can 
put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagi- 
nation of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines 
in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, 
or prism, can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can 
exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence 
is godlike, and he w T ho does most good to his fellow-man is the 
Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. En- 
rich and embellish the universe as you will, it % is only a fit 
temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. 
Inanimate vastuess excites wonder ; knowledge kindles ad- 
miration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is 
marvellous, but moral truth is divine ; and whoever breathes 
its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise. 
For him a new heaven and a new earth have already been 
created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of 
Holies. 



204 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



CLI V.— DANGER OF VAST FORTUNES. 

HORACE MANN. 

Vast fortunes are a misfortune to the State. They confer 
irresponsible power ; and human nature, except in the rarest 
instances, has proved incapable of wielding irresponsible 
power, without abuse. The feudalism of Capital is not a 
whit less formidable than the feudalism of Force. The mil- 
lionaire is as dangerous to the welfare of the community, in 
our day, as was the baronial lord of the middle ages. Both 
supply the means of shelter and of raiment on the same 
conditions ; both hold their retainers in service by the same 
tenure — their necessity for bread ; both use their superiority 
to keep themselves superior. The power of money is as im- 
perial as the power of the sword ; I may as well depend upon 
another for my head as for my bread. The day is sure to 
come, when men will look back upon the prerogatives of 
Capital, at the present time, with as severe and as just a 
condemnation as we now look back upon the predatory 
chieftains of the Dark Ages. Weighed in the balances of 
the sanctuary, or even in the clumsy scales of human justice, 
there is no equity in the allotments, which assign to one 
man but a dollar a day, with working, while another has an 
income of a dollar a minute, without working. Under the 
reign of Force, or under the reign of Money, there may be 
here and there a good man who uses his power for blessing 
and not lor oppressing his race ; but all their natural tenden- 
cies are exclusively bad. In England, we see the feudalism 
of Capital approaching its catastrophe. In Ireland, we see 
the catastrophe consummated. Unhappy Ireland ! where 
the objects of human existence and the purposes of human 
government have all been reversed ; where rulers, for centu- 
ries, have ruled for the aggrandizement of themselves, and 
not for the happiness of their subjects ; where misgovern- 
ment has reigned so long, so supremely, and so atrociously, 
mat, at the present time, the " Three Estates" of the realm 
are Crime, Famine, and Death. 



INFLUENCE OF GENEVA UPON THE PURITANS. 205 



CLV.— INFLUENCE OF REPUBLICAN GENEVA UPON THE 
PURITANS. 

KUFUS CHOATE. 

In the reign of Mary, from 1553 to 1558, a thousand 
learned Englishmen fled from the stake, at home, to the hap- 
pier seats of" Continental Protestantism. Of these, great num- 
bers, I know not how many, came to Geneva. They awaited 
the death of the Queen ; and then, sooner or later, but in the 
time of Elizabeth, went back to England. I ascribe to that 
five years in Geneva an influence that has changed the his- 
tory of the world. I seem to myself to trace to it, as an in- 
fluence on the English race, a new Theology, a new Politics, 
another tone of character, the opening of another era of time 
and of Liberty. I seem to myself to trace to it, a portion, at 
least, of the objects of the great civil war in England, the 
republican constitution framed in the cabin of the May 
Flower, the divinity of Jonathan Edwards, the battle of 
Bunker Hill, and the Independence of America. In that 
brief season, English Puritanism was changed fundamentally 
and forever. Why should one think this so extraordinary ? 
There are times when whole years pass over the head of a 
man, and work no change of mind at all. There are others, 
again, when in an hour, all things pass away, and all things 
become new. A verse of the Bible, a glorious line of some 
old poet, dead a thousand years before, the new-made grave 
of a child, a friend killed by a thunderbolt, as in the case of 
Luther, some single more than tolerable pang of " despised 
love," some single more intolerable act of the "oppressor's 
wrong and proud man's contumely," the gleam of rarer 
beauty on the lake or in the sky, something lighter than the 
fall of a leaf, or a bird's song on the shore, draws tears from 
him in the twinkling of an eye. When, before or since, in 
the history of the world, was the human character subjected 
to an accumulation of agents, so fitted to create it all anew, 
as those which encompassed the English at Geneva ? 

I do not make much account in this of the material gran- 
deur and beauty which burst on their astonished senses, as 
around the solitudes of Patmos. It is of the moral agents of 
change of which I would speak. Passing over the theology 
which they learned there, consider the politics they learned 
there. Consider that the asylum into which they had been 



206 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

admitted, the city which had opened its arms to the pious and 
learned men banished by an English throne, and an English 
hierarchy, was a republic. In the giant hands of guardian 
mountains, ascending from their "silent sea of pines," above 
the thunder-clouds, and reposing there, calmly, amidst their 
encircling stars, while the storm raved by below, before 
which forests and cathedral-tombs of kings went down ; on 
the banks of a contrasted lake, lovelier than a dream of fairy- 
land, in a valley which might have been hollowed out to 
enclose the last home of liberty, there smiled an independent, 
peaceful, law-abiding and prosperous commonwealth. There 
was a state without king or nobles ; there was a church 
without a bishop ; there was a people, governed by laws of 
their own making, and by rulers of their own choosing. 



CLVL— THE SAME— CONTINUED. 

RUFUS CHOATE. 

To the eye of these exiles, bruised and pierced through, by 
the accumulated oppressions of a civil and spiritual tyranny, 
to whom there were coming tidings every day, out of Eng- 
land, that another victim had been struck down, on whose 
still dear home in the sea there fell, every day, a gloomier 
shadow from the frowning turrets of power ; — was not that 
republic of Geneva the brightest image in the whole trans- 
cendent scene ? Do you doubt that they turned from Alpine 
beauty and Alpine grandeur, to look, with a loftier emotion, 
for the first time in their lives, on the serene, unveiled statue 
of Classical Liberty ? Do you not think that this spectacle, 
in their circumstances, and in their moods, prompted pregnant 
doubts, daring hopes, new ideas, " thoughts that wake to 
perish never," doubts, hopes, ideas and thoughts, of which a 
new age is born ? Was it not then and there that the dream 
of Republican Liberty, a dream to be realized somewhere, 
perhaps in England, perhaps in some region of the western 
sun, first mingled itself with the general impulses and the 
general hopes of the Reformation ? Was that dream ever 
let go, down to the morning of that day, when the Pilgrim 
Fathers met in the cabin of their shattered bark, and then, 
as she rose and fell on the stern New England sea, and the 



SECRET OF THE MURDERER. 20? 

voices of the November forests rang through her torn topmost 
rigging, subscribed the first Republican Constitution of the 
New World ? I confess myself to be of the opinion of those 
who trace to that spot and that time the Republicanism of 
the Puritans. I confess, too, that I love to trace the pedigree 
of our transatlantic liberty, thus backward, through Switzer- 
land, to its native land of Greece. I think this is the true 
line of succession, down which it has descended. I agi*ee 
with Swift, and Dryden, and Bishop Burnett, in that hypoth- 
esis. There was a liberty, no doubt, which the Puritans 
found, and kept, and improved, in England. They would 
have changed it, but were not able. But that was a kind of 
liberty, which admitted and demanded an inequality of man, 
an insubordination of ranks, a favored eldest son, the ascending 
orders of a hierarchy, the vast and constant pressure of a super- 
incumbent crown. It was the liberty of Feudalism. It was 
the liberty of a united monarchy, overhung and shaded by 
the imposing architecture of great antagonist elements of the 
State. Such was not the form of liberty which our fathers 
brought with them. Allowing, of course, for that anomalous 
relation to the English crown, three thousand miles off, it was 
republican freedom as perfect the moment they stepped on 
the rock as it is to-day. It has not all been born in the 
woods of Germany, or between the Elbe and the Ider, or on 
the level of Runnymede. It was the child of other climes 
and other days. It sprang to life in Greece. It gilded, next, 
the early and middle age of Italy. It then reposed in the 
hollow breast of the Alps. It descended, at length, on the 
iron-bound coast of New England, " and set the stars of glory 
there." 



CLVIL— SECRET OF THE MURDERER. 

DAXIEL WEBSTER. 

He has done the murder — no eye has seen him, no ear has 
heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe ! Ah ! 
gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can 
be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither 
nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is 
safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all 
disguises, and beholds everything, as in the splendor of noon, — 



208 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by 
men. True is it, generally speaking, that " murder will out." 
True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so 
govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, 
by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding dis- 
covery. Especially, in a cas^ exciting so much attention as 
this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A 
thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, 
every circumstance, connected with the time and place ; a 
thousand ears catch every whisper ; a thousand excited minds 
intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and 
ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of dis- 
covery. Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own 
secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible 
impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its 
guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The 
human heart was not made for the residence of such an in- 
habitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it 
dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devour- 
ing it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from 
heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses, 
soon comes to possess him ; and, like the evil spirits of which 
we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it 
will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, 
and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees 
it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its work- 
ings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his 
master. It betrays his discretion ; it breaks down his cour- 
age ; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from with- 
out begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to 
entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater 
violence to burst forth. It must be confessed : it will be con- 
fessed : there is no refuge from confession but suicide ; and 
suicide is confession. 



CLVIIL— BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate 
national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. 
It is higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the 



MORAL POWER OF TUBLTC OPINION, 20G 

spirit of natioual independence, and we wish that the light 
of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of 
our conviction of that unmeasured benefit, which has been 
conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences, 
which have been produced, by the same events, on the gen- 
eral interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to 
mark a spot, which must forever be dear to us and our pos- 
terity. We wish, that whosoever, in all coming time, shall 
turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undis- 
tinguished, where the first great battle of the Revolution was 
fought. We wish, that this structure may proclaim the 
magnitude and importance of that event, to every class and 
every age. We wish, that infancy may learn the purpose of 
its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered 
age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which 
it suggests. We wish, that labor may look up here, and be 
proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish, that, in those days 
of disaster, which, as they come on all nations, must be expected 
to come on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes 
hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national 
power still stand strong. We wish, that this column, rising 
toward heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples 
dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, 
a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, 
that the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native 
shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be 
something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory 
of his country. Let it rise, till it meet the sun in its coming ; 
let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day 
linger and play on its summit. 



CLIX.— MORAL POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION". 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

It may, in the next place, be asked, perhaps, supposing all 
this to be true, what can we do ? Are we to go to war ? 
Are we to interfere in the Greek cause, or any other Euro- 
pean cause ? Are we to endanger our pacific relations ? — 
No, certainly not. What, then, the question recurs, remains 
for us. If we will not endanger our own peace : if we will 



210 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

neither furnish armies, nor navies, to the cause which we 
think the just one, what is there in our power ? 

Sir, this reasoning mistakes the age. The time has been, 
indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the 
principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for 
mankind, there has arrived a great change in this respect. 
Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the 
progress of knowledge is advanced ; and the public opinion 
of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over 
mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most for- 
midable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppres- 
sion ; and, as it grows more intelligent and more intense, it 
will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by 
military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, 
irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary 
warfare. It is that impassible, unextinguishable enemy of 
mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels, 

" Vital in every part, 
Cannot, but by annihilating, die." 

Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is in vain for power 
to talk of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are 
desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what armies sub- 
dued, or what provinces overrun. In the history of the year 
that has passed by us, and in the instance of unhappy Spain, 
we have seen the vanity of all triumphs, in a cause which 
violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It 
is nothing, that the troops of France have passed from the 
Pyrenees to Cadiz ; it is nothing that an unhappy and pros- 
trate nation has fallen before them ; it is nothing that arrests, 
and confiscation, and execution, sweep away the little rem- 
nant of national resistance. There is an enemy that still 
exists to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the 
conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations; it calls upon 
him to take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indig- 
nant ; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren 
sceptre ; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but shall 
moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his ex- 
ultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice, it 
denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and 
civilized age, it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, 
and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the con- 
sciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind. 



SACRED FROM WAR. 211 

CLX.— SACRED FROM WAR. 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was 
at least one spot, the small island of Delos, dedicated to the 
Gods, and kept at all times sacred from war. No hostile 
foot ever sought to press this kindly soil ; and the citizens of 
all countries here met, in common worship, beneath the aegis 
of inviolable Peace. So let us dedicate our beloved country ; 
and may the blessed consecration be felt, in all its parts, 
everywhere throughout its ample domain ! The temple of 
honor shall be surrounded, here at last, by the Temple of 
Concord, that it may never more be entered through any 
portal of War ; the horn of Abundance shall overflow at its 
gates ; the angel of Religion shall be the guide over its stepc 
of flashing adamant ; while within its enraptured courts, 
purged of violence and wrong, justice, returned to earth from 
her long exile in the skies, with mighty scales for Nations as 
for men, shall rear her serene and majestic front ; and by her 
side, greatest of all, charity, sublime in meekness, hoping 
all, and enduring all, shall divinely temper every righteous 
decree, and with words of infinite cheer, shall inspire those 
good works that cannot vanish away. And the future chiefs 
of the Republic, destined to uphold the glories of a new era, 
unspotted by human blood, shall be "the first in Peace, and 
the first in the hearts of their countrymen." 

But while seeking these blissful glories for ourselves, let us 
strive to extend them to other lands. Let the bugles sound 
the truce of God to the whole world forever. Let the sel- 
fish boast of the Spartan women become the grand chorus of 
mankind, that they have never seen the smoke of an enemy's 
camp. Let the iron belt of martial music, which now en- 
compasses the earth, be exchanged for the golden cestus of 
Peace, clothing all with celestial beauty. 



212 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



CLXI.— PLEA m THE MICHIGAN RAILROAD CONSPIRACY 

TRIAL. 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

Gentlemen, in the middle of the fourth month we draw 
near to the end of what has seemed to be an endless labor. 
While we have been here, events have transpired which 
have roused national ambition — kindled national resentment 
— dawn forth national sympathies — and threatened to dis- 
turb the tranquillity of empires. He who, although He work- 
eth unseen, yet worketh irresistibly and unceasingly, has sus- 
pended neither His guardian care nor His paternal discipline 
on ourselves. Some of you have sickened and convalesced. 
Others have parted with cherished ones, who, removed be- 
fore they had time to contract the stain of earth, were al- 
ready prepared for the kingdom of Heaven. There have 
been changes, too, among the unfortunate men whom I have 
defended. The sound of the hammer has died away in the 
workshops of some ; the harvests have ripened and wasted in 
the fields of others. Want, and fear, and sorrow, have en- 
tered into all their dwellings. Their own rugged forms have 
drooped ; their sunburnt brows have blanched ; and their 
hands have become as soft to the pressure of friendship as 
yours or mine. One of them — a vagrant boy — whom I 
found imprisoned here for a few extravagant words, that, 
perhaps, he never uttered, has pined away and died. An- 
other, he who was feared, hated, and loved most of all, has 
fallen in the vigor of life, 

" hacked down, 
His thick summer leaves all fallen.'* 

When such an one falls, amid the din and smoke of the 
battle-field, our emotions are overpowered — suppressed — lost 
in the excitement of public passion. But when he perishes 
a victim of domestic or social strife — when we see the iron 
enter his soul, and see it, day by day, sinking deeper and 
deeper, until nature gives way, and he lies lifeless at our feet — 
then there is nothing to check the flow of forgiveness, com- 
passion, and sympathy. If, in the moment when closing his 
eyes on earth, he declares : " I have committed no crime 
against my country ; I die a martyr for the liberty of speech, 
and perish of a broken heart" — then, indeed, do we feel that 
the tongues of dying men enforce attention, like deep bar- 



DANGER OF MILITARY SUPREMACY. 213 

mony. Who would willingly consent to decide on the guilt 
or innocence of one who has thus been withdrawn from our 
erring judgment, to the tribunal of eternal justice? Yet it 
cannot be avoided. If Abel F. Fitch was guilty of the 
crime charged in this indictment, every man here may never- 
theless be innocent ; but if he was innocent, then there is not 
one of these, his associates in life, who can be guilty. Try 
him, then, since you must condemn him, if you must — and 
with him condemn them. But remember that you are mor- 
tal, and he is now immortal ; and that, before that tribunal 
where he stands, you must stand and confront him, and vin- 
dicate your judgment. Remember, too, that he is now free. 
He has not only left behind him the dungeon, the cell, and 
the chain, but he exults in a freedom, compared with which, 
the liberty we enjoy is slavery and bondage. You stand, 
then, between the dead and the living. There is no need to 
bespeak the exercise of your caution — of your candor — and 
of your impartiality. You will, I am sure, be just to the 
living, and true to your country ; hecause, under circumstan- 
ces so solemn — so full of awe — you cannot be unjust to the 
dead, nor false to your country, nor to your God. 



CLXII.— DANGER OF MILITARY SUPREMACY. 

HENRY CLAY. 

Recall to your recollection the free nations which have 
gone before us. Where are they now ? 

M Gone glimmering through the dream of things that were, 
A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.'' 

And how have they lost their liberties ? If we could tran- 
sport ourselves to the ages when Greece and Rome flourished 
iu their greatest prosperity, and, mingling in the throng, 
should ask a Grecian, if he did not fear that some daring 
military chieftain, covered with glory, some Philip or Alex- 
ander, would one day overthrow the liberties of his country, 
the confident and indignant Grecian would exclaim, "No! 
no ! we have nothing to fear from our heroes ; our liberties 
will be eternal." If a Roman citizen had been asked, if he 
did not fear that the conqueror of Gaul might establish a 



214 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

throne upon the ruins of public liberty, he would have in- 
stantly repelled* the unjust insinuation. Yet Greece fell ; 
Caesar passed the Rubicon, and the patriotic arm even of 
Brutus could not preserve the liberties of his devoted country ! 
We are fighting a great moral battle, for the benefit, not 
only of our country, but of all mankind. The eyes of the 
whole world are in fixed attention upon us. One, and the 
largest portion of it, is gazing with contempt, with jealousy, 
and with envy ; the other portion, with hope, with confi- 
dence, and with affection. Everywhere the black cloud of 
legitimacy is suspended over the world, save only one bright 
spot, which breaks out from the political hemisphere of the 
west, to enlighten and animate, and gladden the human 
heart. Observe that, by the downfall of liberty here, all 
mankind are enshrouded in a pall of universal darkness. 
To you belongs the high privilege of transmitting, unimpaired, 
to posterity, the fair character and liberty of our country. 
Do you expect to execute this high trust, by trampling, or 
suffering to be trampled down, law, justice, the constitution, 
and the rights of the people ? by exhibiting examples of in- 
humanity, and cruelty, and ambition ? Beware how you 
give a fatal sanction, in this infant period of our republic, 
scarcely yet two-score years old, to military insubordination. 
Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Caesar, 
England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that if 
we would escape the rock on which they split, we must 
avoid their errors. 



CLXIIL— EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY. 

HENRY W. BEECHER. 

Executive clemency, on its frequency, has been a tempta- 
tion to dishonesty. Who will fear to be a culprit when a 
legal sentence is the argument of pity, and the prelude of 
pardon? What can the community expect but growing dis- 
honesty, when juries connive at acquittals, and judges con- 
demn only to petition a pardon ; when honest men and offi- 
cers fly before a mob ; when jails are besieged and threat- 
ened, if felons are not relinquished ; when the Executive, 
consulting the spirit of the community, receives the demands 



DEATH OF JEFFERSON AND ADAMS. 215 

of tlie mob, and humbly complies, throwing down the fences 
of the law, that base rioters may walk unimpeded, to their 
work of vengeance, or unjust mercy ? A sickly sentimen- 
tality too often enervates the administration of justice ; and 
the pardoning power becomes the master-key to let out un- 
washed, unrepentant criminals. They have fleeced us, rob- 
bed us, and are ulcerous sores in the body politic ; yet our 
heart turns to water over their merited punishment. A fine 
young fellow, by accident, writes another's name for his own ; 
by a mistake equally unfortunate, he presents it at the bank ; 
innocently draws out the large amount ; generously spends 
a part, and absent-mindedly hides the rest. Hard-hearted 
wretches there are, who would punish him for this ! Young 
men, admiring the neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, 
and curse a stupid jury that knew no better than to send to 
a penitentiary, him, whose skill deserved a cashiership. He 
goes to his cell, the pity of a whole metropolis. Bulletins 
from Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards is doing, as if 
he were Napoleon at St. Helena. At length pardoned, he 
will go forth again to a renowned liberty ! 



CLXIV.— DEATH OF JEFFERSON AND ADAMS. 

EDWARD EVERETT 

The jubilee of America is turned into mourning. Its joy 
is mingled with sadness ; its silver trumpet breathes a 
mingled strain. Henceforth, while America exists among 
the nations of earth, the first emotion on the Fourth of July 
will be of joy and triumph in the great event which immor- 
talizes the day ; the second will be one of chastened and 
tender recollection of the venerable men, who departed on 
the morning of the jubilee. This mingled emotion of triumph 
and sadness has sealed the beauty and sublimity of our great 
anniversary. In the simple commemoration of a victorious 
political achievement, there seems not enough to occupy our 
purest and best feelings. The Fourth of July was before a 
day of triumph, exultation, and national pride ; but the 
angel of death has mingled in the glorious pageant to teach 
us we are men. Had our venerated fathers left us on any 
other day, it would have been henceforth a day of mournful 



216 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

recollection. But now, the whole nation feels, as with one 
heart, that since it must sooner or later have heen bereaved 
of its revered fathers, it could not have wished that any 
other day had been the day of their decease. Our anniver- 
sary festival was before triumphant ; it is now triumphant 
and sacred. It before called out the young and ardent, to 
join in the public rejoicings ; it now also speaks in a touch- 
ing voice, to the retired, to the gray-headed, to the mild and 
peaceful spirits, to the whole family of sober freemen. It is 
henceforth, what the dying Adams pronounced it, " a great 
and a good day." It is full of greatness and full of goodness. 
It' is absolute and complete. The death of the men who 
declared our independence, — their death on the day of the 
jubilee, — was all that was wanting to the Fourth of July. 
To die on that day, and to die together, was all that was 
wanting to Jefferson and Adams. 



CLXV.— EXECUTIVE POWER. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Mr. President, the contest, for ages, has been to rescue 
liberty from the grasp of executive power. Whoever has 
engaged in her sacred cause, from the days of the downfall 
of those great aristocracies, which had stood between the 
king and the people, to the time of our own independence, 
has struggled for the accomplishment of that single object. 
On the long list of the champions of human freedom, there 
is not one name dimmed by the reproach of advocating the 
extension of executive authority : on the contrary, the uni- 
form and steady purpose of all such champions has been to 
limit and restrain it. To this end the spirit of liberty, gro\r* 
ing more and more enlightened, and more and more vigorous 
from age to age, has been battering for centuries, against the 
solid butments of the feudal system. To this end, all that 
could be gained from the imprudence, snatched from the 
weakness, or wrung from the necessities, of crowned heads, 
has been carefully gathered up, secured and hoarded, as the 
rich treasures, the very jewels of liberty. To this end, popu- 
lar and representative right has kept up its warfare against 
prerogative, with various success ; sometimes writing the 
history of a whole age in blood ; sometimes witnessing the 
martyrdom of Sidneys and Russells, often baffled and re- 



GREATNESS OF NAPOLEON. 2 1 7 

pulsed, but still gaining on tbe wbole, and holding what is 
gained with a grasp which nothing but the complete extinc- 
tion of its own being could compel it to relinquish. At 
length, the great conquest over executive power, in the lead- 
ing western states of Europe, has been accomplished. The 
feudal system, like other stupendous fabrics of past ages, is 
known only by the rubbish which it has left behind it. 
Crowned heads have been compelled to submit to the re- 
straints of law, and the people, with that intelligence and 
that spirit which makes the voice resistless, have been able 
to say to prerogative, " Thus far shalt thou come, and no 
farther." I need hardly say, sir, that, into the full enjoyment 
of all which Europe has reached only through such slow 
and painful steps, we sprang at once, by the declaration of 
independence, and by the establishment of free representa- 
tive governments ; governments borrowing more or less from 
the models of other free states, but strengthened, secured, 
improved in their symmetry, and deepened in their founda- 
tion, by those great men of our own country, whose names 
will be as familiar to future times as if they were written on 
the arch of the sky. 



CLXVI.— GREATNESS OF NAPOLEON. 

W. E. CHANNING 

By the greatness of action, we mean the sublime power of 
conceiving bold and extensive plans ; of constructing and 
bringing to bear on a mighty object a complicated machinery 
of means, energies, and arrangements, and of accomplishing 
great outward effects. To this head belongs the greatness of 
Bonaparte, and that he possessed it, w T e need not prove, and 
none will be hardy enough to deny. A man, who raised 
himself from obscurity to a throne, who changed the face of 
the world, who made himself felt through powerful and civil- 
ized nations, who sent the terror of his name across seas and 
oceans, whose will was pronounced and feared as destiny, 
whose donatives were crowns, whose ante-chamber was 
thronged with submissive princes, who broke down the awful 
barrier of the Alps and made them a highway, and whose 
fame was spread beyond the boundaries of civilization to the 
steppes of the Cossack, and the deserts of the Arab ; a man, 
who has left this record of himself in history, has taken out 

10 



218 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

of our hands the question, whether he shall be called great. 
All must concede to him a sublime power of action, an energy 
equal to great effects. 

We are not disposed, however, to consider him as preemi- 
nent even in this order of greatness. War was his chief 
sphere. He gained: his ascendency in Europe by the sword. 
But war is not the field for the highest active talent, and 
Napoleon, we suspect, was conscious of this truth. The glory 
of being the greatest general of his age would not have satis- 
fied him. He would have scorned to take his place by the 
side of Marlborough or Turenne. It was as the founder of 
an empire, which threatened for a time to comprehend the 
world, and which demanded other talents besides that of 
war, that he challenged unrivalled fame. And here we 
question his claim. Here we cannot award him supremacy. 
The project of universal empire, however imposing, was not 
original. The Revolutionary governments of France had 
adopted it before ; nor can we consider it as a sure indication 
of greatness, when we remember that the weak and vain 
mind of Louis the Fourteenth was large enough to cherish it. 
The question is ; did Napoleon bring to this design the capa- 
city of advancing it by bold and original conceptions, adapted 
to an age of civilization, and of singular intellectual and moral 
excitement ? Did he discover new foundations of power ? 
Did he frame new bonds of union for subjugated nations? 
Did he breathe a spirit which could supplant the old national 
attachments, or did he invent any substitutes for those vulgar 
instruments of force and corruption, which any and every 
usurper would have used ? Never in the records of time did 
the world furnish such materials to work with, such means 
of modelling nations afresh, of building up a new power, of 
introducing a new era, as did Europe at the period of the 
French Revolution. Never was the human mind so capable 
of new impulses. And did Napoleon prove himself equal to 
the condition of the world ? Do we detect one original con- 
ception in his means of universal empire ? Did he seize on 
the enthusiasm of his age, that powerful principle, more effi- 
cient than arms or policy, and bend it to his purpose ? He 
did nothing but follow the beaten track, but apply force and 
fraud in their very coarsest forms. With the sword in one 
hand and bribes in the other, he imagined himself absolute 
master of the human mind 



SELECTIONS FROM EUROPEAN ELOQUENCE, 



ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



SELECTIONS FROM EUROPEAN ELOQUENCE. 



I— THE PERFECT ORATOR. 

SHERIDAN. 

Imagine to yourselves a Demosthenes, addressing the most 
illustrious assembly in the world, upon a point whereon the 
fate of the most illustrious of nations depended. — How awful 
such a meeting ! how vast the subject ! By the power of 
his eloquence, the augustness of the assembly is lost in the 
dignity of the orator ; and the importance of the subject, ibr 
a while, superseded by the admiration »of his talents. 

With what strength of argument, with what powers of 
the fancy, with what emotions of the heart, does he assault 
and subjugate the whole man ; and, at once, captivate his 
reason, his imagination, and his passions ! To effect this, 
must be the utmost of the most improved state of human 
nature. Not a faculty that he possesses, but is here exerted 
to its highest pitch. All his internal powers are at work ; 
all his external, testify their energies. Within, the memory, 
the fancy, the judgment, the passions, are all busy ; without, 
every muscle, every nerve is exerted ; — not a feature, not a 
limb, but speaks. The organs of the body, attuned to the 
exertions of the mind, through the kindred organs of the 
hearers, instantaneously vibrate these energies from soul to 
soul. Notwithstanding the diversity of mind in such a multi- 
tude, by the lightning of eloquence they are melted into one 
mass ; the whole assembly, actuated in one and the same 
way, become, as it were, but one man, and have but one 
voice. The universal cry is — Let us inarch against Philip, 
let us fight for our liberties — let us conquer or die ! 



222 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

II.— APPEAL FOR QUEEN CAROLINE. 

BROUGHAM. 

Such, my lords, is the case before you ! such is the evi- 
dence in support of this measure — evidence inadequate to 
prove a debt, impotent to deprive of a civil right, ridiculous 
to convict of the lowest offence, scandalous, if brought for- 
ward to support a charge of the highest nature which the 
law knows, monstrous to ruin the honor and blast the name 
of an English queen ! What shall I say, then, if this is the 
proof by which an act of judicial legislation, a parliamentary 
sentence, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against 
a defenceless woman ? My lords, I pray you to pause ; I 
do earnestly beseech you to take heed. You are standing 
upon the brink of a precipice — then beware ! It will go forth 
as your judgment, if sentence shall pass against the queen. 
But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced, 
which, instead of reaching its object, will return and bound 
back upon those who give it. Save the country, my lords, 
from the horrors of this catastrophe — save yourselves from 
this peril. Revere that country of which you are the orna- 
ments, but in which you can nourish no longer, when severed 
from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the 
roots and the stem of the tree. Save that country, that you 
may continue to adorn it; save the crown, which is in jeop- 
ardy, the aristocracy, which is shaken ; save the altar, 
which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred 
throne ! You have said, my lords, you have willed, the 
church to the queen, have willed that she should be deprived 
of its solemn service. She has, instead of that solemnity, 
the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers 
of mine. But I do here pour forth my humble supplication 
to the throne of mercy, that that mercy may be poured down 
upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits of its 
rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to 
justice. 



DEFENCE FROM THE CHARGE OF TYRANNY. 223 

III.— DEMAND FOR JUSTICE TO IRELAND. 

O'CONNELL. 

I will never be guilty of the crime of despairing of my 
country ; and to-day, after two centuries of suffering, here I 
stand amidst you in this hall, repeating the same complaints, 
demanding the same justice which was claimed by our 
fathers ; but no longer with the humble voice of the suppli- 
ant, but with the sentiment of our force and the conviction 
that Ireland will henceforth find means to do, without you, 
what you shall have refused to do for her ! I make no com- 
promise with you ; I want the same rights for us that you 
enjoy ; the same municipal system for Ireland as for England 
and Scotland : otherwise, what is a union with you ? A 
union upon parchment ! Well, we will tear this parchment 
to pieces, and the Empire will be sundered ! 

I hear, day after day, the plaintive voice of Ireland, crying, 
Am I to be kept forever waiting and forever suffering ? No, 
fellow-countrymen, you will be left to suffer no longer : you 
will not have in vain asked justice from a people of brothers. 
England is no longer that country of prejudices where the mere 
name of popery excited every breast and impelled to iniqui- 
tous cruelties. The representatives of Ireland have carried 
the Reform bill, which has enlarged the franchises of the 
English people ; they will be heard with favor in asking 
their colleagues to render justice to Ireland. But should it 
prove otherwise, should Parliament still continue deaf to our 
prayer, then we will appeal to the English nation, and if the 
nation too should suffer itself to be blinded by it> prejudices, 
we will enter the fastnesses of our mountains and take coun- 
sel but of our energy, our courage, and our despair. 



IV.— DEFENCE FROM THE CHARGE OF TYRANNY. 

ROBESPIERRE. 

They call me a tyrant ! If I were so, they would fall at 
my feet : I should have gorged them with gold, assured them 
of impunity to their crimes, and they would have worshipped 
me. Had I been so, the kings whom we have conquered 



224 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

would have been my most cordial supporters. It is by the 
aid of scoundrels you arrive at tyranny. Whither tend those 
who combat them ? To the tomb and immortality ! Who 
is the tyrant that protects me ? What is the faction to which 

I belong ? It is yourselves ! What is the party which, 
since the commencement of the Revolution, has crushed all 
other factions — has annihilated so many specious traitors ? 
It is yourselves ; it is the people ; it is the force of principles 1 
This is the party to which I am devoted, and against which 
crime is everywhere leagued. I am ready to lay down my 
life without regret. I have seen the past: I foresee the 
future. What lover of his country would wish to live, when 
he can no longer succor oppressed innocence ? Why should 
he desire to remain in an order of things where intrigue 
eternally triumphs over truth — where justice is deemed an 
imposture — where the vilest passions, the most ridiculous 
fears, fill every heart, instead of the sacred interests of hu- 
manity ? Who can bear the punishment of seeing the hor- 
rible succession of traitors, more or less skilful in concealing 
their hideous vices under the mask of virtue, and who will 
leave to posterity the difficult task of determining which was 
the most atrocious ? In contemplating the multitude of vices 
which the Revolution has let loose pell mell with the civic 
virtues, I own I sometimes fear that I myself shall be sul- 
lied in the eyes of posterity by their calumnies. But I am 
consoled by the reflection that, if I have seen in history all 
the defenders of liberty overwhelmed by calumny, I have 
seen their oppressors die also. The good and the bad disap- 
pear alike from the earth ; but in very different conditions. 
No, Chaumette ! "Death is not an eternal sleep!'' — Citi- 
zens, efface from the tombs that maxim, engraven by sacri- 
legious hands, which throws a funeral pall over nature, 
which discourages oppressed innocence : write rather, "Death 
is the commencement of immortality !" I leave to the 
oppressors of the people a terrible legacy, which well becomes 
the situation in which I am placed ; it is the awful truth, 

II Thou shalt die !" 



ORATION AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS. 22E 



V.— PERORATION IN THE ORATION AGAINST WARREN 
HASTINGS. 

BURKE. 

My lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, 
and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the 
advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great 
chain of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we 
call the world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk 
from no labor ; that we have been guilty of no prevarication ; 
that we have made no compromise with crime ; that we 
have feared no odium whatsoever, in the long warfare we have 
carried on with the crimes — with the vices — with the exor- 
bitant wealth — with the enormous and overpowering in- 
fluence of Eastern corruption, This war, my lords, we have 
waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has been fought, 
at your lordships' bar, for the last seven years. My lords, 
twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life of 
man ; it is no inconsiderable space in the history of a great 
nation. A business which has so long occupied the councils 
and the tribunals of Great Britain, cannot possibly be hud- 
dled over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. 
Nothing but some of those great revolutions, that break the 
traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face 
of nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My lords, we are all 
elevated to a degree of importance by it ; the meanest of us 
will, by means of it, more or less, become the concern of pos- 
terity — if we are yet to hope for such a thing, in the present 
state of the world, as a recording, retrospective, civilized pos- 
terity : but this is in the hand of the great Disposer of events ; 
it is not ours to settle how it shall be. My lords, your house yet 
stands ; it stands as a great edifice ; but let me say, it stands in 
the midst of ruins — in the midst of the ruins that have been 
made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed 
or shattered this globe of ours. My lords, it has pleased 
Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear every 
moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. 
There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mu- 
tation, that which existed before the world, and will survive 
the fabric of the world itself — I mean justice : that justice 
which, emanating from Divinty, has a place in the breast of 
very one of us, given us for our guide with regard to our- 
10* 



226 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

selves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after 
this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser be- 
fore the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the 
tenor of a well-spent life. 

My lords, if you must fall, may you so fall ! but if you 
stand — and stand I trust you will — together with the fortune 
of this ancient monarchy — together with the ancient laws 
and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom — may you 
stand as unimpeached in honor as in power ; may you stand, 
not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, 
as a security for virtue ; may you stand long, and long stand 
the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted 
nations ; may you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual 
residence of an inviolable justice. 



VI.— CATILINE'S ADDRESS TO THE CONSPIRATORS. 

SALLUST. 

Had not your valor and fidelity been well known to me, 
fruitless would have been the smiles of Fortune ; the prospect 
of as mighty domination would in vain have opened upon 
us ; nor would I have mistaken illusive hopes for realities, un- 
certain things for certain. But since, on many and great occa- 
sions, I have known you to be brave and faithful, I have ventur- 
ed to engage in the greatest and noblest undertaking ; for I well 
know that good and evil are common to you and me. That 
friendship at length is secure, which is founded on wishing 
and dreading the same things. You all know what designs 
I have long revolved in my mind ; but my confidence in them 
daily increases, when I reflect what our fate is likely to be, 
if we do not vindicate our freedom by our own hands. For, 
since the republic has fallen under the power and dominion 
of a few, kings yield their tributes, governorships their profits 
to them : all the rest, whether strenuous, good, noble or ig- 
noble, are the mere vulgar : without influence, without au- 
thority, we are obnoxious to those to whom, if the common- 
wealth existed, we should be a terror. All honor, favor, 
wealth, is centered in them, or those whom they favor : to 
us are left dangers, repulses, lawsuits, poverty. How long 
will you endure them, ye bravest of men? Is it not bet- 



CONCILIATION OF IRELAND. 227 

ter to (lie bravely, than drag out a miserable and dishonored 
life, the sport of pride, the victims of disgrace ? But by the 
faith of gods and men, victory is in our own hands : our 
strength is unimpaired ; our minds energetic : theirs is en- 
feebled by age, extinguished by riches. All that is required 
is to begin boldly ; the rest follows of course. Where is the 
man of a manly spirit, who can tolerate that they should 
overflow with riches, which they squander in ransacking the 
sea, in levelling mountains, while to us the common neces- 
saries of life are wanting? They have two or more superb 
palaces each ; we know not wherein to lay our heads. When 
they buy pictures, statues, basso-relievos, they destroy the old 
to make way for the new : in every possible w r ay they squan- 
der away their money ; but all their desires are unable to ex- 
haust their riches. At home, we have only poverty ; abroad, 
debts: present adversity; worse prospects. What, in fine, 
is left us, but our woe-stricken souls? What, then, shall 
we do? That, that which you have ever most desired. Lib- 
erty is before your eyes ; and it will soon bring riches, re- 
nown, glory : Fortune holds out these rewards to the victors. 
The time, the place, our dangers, our wants, the splendid 
spoils of war, exhort you more than my words. Make use 
of me either as a commander or a private soldier. Neither 
in soul nor body will I be absent from your side. These 
deeds I hope I shall perform as consul with you, unless my 
hopes deceive me, and you are prepared rather to obey as 
slaves, than to command as rulers. 



VIL— CONCILIATION" OF IRELAND. 

ERSKINE. 

We refused to look at the grievances of America whilst 
they were curable. It was this refusal which gave birth to 
her independence. The same procrastinating spirit prevailed 
at that period which prevails now, and the same delusion as 
to the effects of terror and coercion. Lord Chatham's warn- 
ing voice was rejected " Give satisfaction to America," 
said that great statesman — "conciliate her affection — do it 
to-night — do it before you sleep." But we slept and did it 
not, and America was separated from us forever. 



228 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Ireland in the same manner obtained a sudden and im- 
sought-for independence, and has been brought to her present 
state of alarming hostility to this country. We refused to 
gee what stared us in the face in characters reddening into 
blood ; but the light broke in upon ns at last, not through 
well-constructed windows, but through the yawning chasms 
of our ruin. We were taught wisdom through humiliation — 
I am afraid we have much more to learn in that useful, but 
melancholy school. The identical system by which America 
was lost to Great Britain, ministers are now acting over again 
with regard to Ireland at this moment. They refuse to re- 
dress her grievances. They listen not to her complaints ; 
Avhat America was, Ireland, perhaps England itself, will 
shortly be, if you obstinately refuse to adopt that system of 
conciliation which alone can bring back affection and obedi- 
ence to any government which has lost it. 

Let ministers instantly forego that fatal system of coercion 
which forced America from her connection with us into the 
arms of France, and which is, at this very moment, driving 
Ireland to seek the same protection. Let them relinquish 
the insane attempt to retain the affection of that country at 
the point of the bayonet, which is hourly tearing out of the 
hearts of Irishmen those feelings of kindness and love for 
England, upon which the permanence of union between the 
two countries can alone be established. This fatal system 
of coercion and terror, which ministers seem resolved to per- 
severe in, has made half Europe submit to the arms of 
France, and has given the air of romance or rather of en- 
chantment to the career of her conquests. Now in HcDand 
— now on the Rhine — almost at the same moment overturn- 
ing the states of Italy, and overawing the empire at the gates 
of Vienna. Without meaning to underrate the unexampled 
energies of a mighty nation repelling the atrocious combina- 
tions of despotism against her liberties, the nations with 
which she contended had no privileges to fight for, o v any 
governments worth preserving ; they felt therefore no interest 
in their preservation. Whilst the powers of such govern- 
ments remained, their subjects were drawn up in arms, and 
appeared to be armies ; but when invasion had silenced the 
power which oppressed them, they became in a moment the 
subjects and the soldiers of their invaders Take warning 
from so many examples — the principles of revolution are 
eternal and universal. 



A FREE CONSTITUTION. 229 



VIIL— A FREE CONSTITUTION. 

BOLING BROKE. 

If ever a weak and corrupt administration should arise ; 
if an evil minister should embezzle the public treasure ; if he 
should load the nation in times of peace, with taxes greater 
than would be necessary to defray the charge of an expensive 
war ; if money thus raised should be expended, under the 
pretence of secret service, to line his own pockets ; to stop 
the mouths of his hungry dependants ; to bribe some future 
parliament to approve his measures ; and to patch up an ill- 
digested, base, dishonorable peace with foreign powers, whom 
he shall have offended by a continual series of provocations 
and blunders ; if he should advise his sovereign to make it a 
maxim, that his security consisted in the continuance, or in- 
crease of the public debts, and that his grandeur was found- 
ed on the poverty of his subjects ; if he should hazard the 
affections of the people, by procuring greater revenues for 
the crown, than they shall be able to spend or the people to 
raise ; and after this, engage his prince to demand still farther 
sums as his right, which all men should be sensible were not 
his due ; I say, if the nation should ever fall under these un- 
happy circumstances, they will then find the excellence of a 
free constitution. The public discontent, which upon such 
occasions has formerly burst forth in a torrent of blood, of 
universal confusion and desolation, will make itself known 
only in faint murmurs, and dutiful general complaints. The 
nation will wait long, before they engage in any desperate 
measures, that may endanger a constitution, which they just- 
ly adore, and from which they confidently expect a sure, 
though perhaps a dilatory justice, upon such an enormous of- 
fender. 

These are the inestimable advantages of our present happy 
settlement. Let us prize it as we ought. Let us not have 
the worse opinion of the thing itself, because it may, in some 
instances, be abused. But let us retain the highest venera- 
tion for it. Let us remember how much it is our right, and 
let us resolve to preserve it, untainted and inviolable. Then 
shall we truly serve our king ; we shall do our duty to our 
country ; and preserve ourselves in the condition, for w T hich 
all men were originally designed ; that is, of a free people. 



230 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

IX.— IMMORTAL INFLUENCE OF ATHENS. 

T. B. MACAULAY. 

All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and 
power, in every country and in every age, have been the 
triumphs of Athens. Whenever a few great minds have 
made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of 
liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of 
them ; inspiring, encouraging, and consoling ; — by the lonely 
lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal ; in the trib- 
une of Mirabeau ; in the cell of Galileo ; on the scaffold of 
Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private 
happiness ? Who shall say how many thousands have been 
made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which 
she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies 
which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, — 
liberty in bondage, — health in sickness, — society in solitude. 
Her power is indeed manifested at the bar.; in the senate; 
in the field of battle ; in the schools of philosophy. But 
these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sor- 
row, or assuages pain, — wherever it brings gladness to eyes 
which fail with wakefulness and tears, and wake for the 
dark house and the long sleep, — there is exhibited, in its 
noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens. 

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to aban- 
don to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and 
gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice, 
which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden 
riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say, 
that no external advantage is to be compared with that puri- 
fication of the intellectual eye, which gives us to contemplate 
the infinite wealth of the mental world ; all the hoarded 
treasures of the primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of 
the yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens toman. 
Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty cen- 
turies been annihilated ; her people have degenerated into 
timid slaves ; her language into a barbarous jargon ; her 
temples have been given up to the successive depredations of 
Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen ; but her intellectual empire 
is imperishable. And, when those who have rivalled her 
greatness, shall have shared her fate : when civilization and 
knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents ; 



TRTAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 231 

when the sceptre shall have passed away from England 
when perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain 
lahor to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of 
our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some 
misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple : 
and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the 
river of the ten thousand masts, — her influence and her 
glory would still survive, — fresh in eternal youth, exempt 
from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual prin- 
ciple from which they derived their origin, and over which 
they exercise their control. 



X.— TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 

T. B. MACAULAJT. 

The place was. worthy of such a trial. It was the great 
hall of William Rufus ; the hall which had resounded with 
acclamations at the inaugurations of thirty kings ; the hall 
which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the just 
absolution of Vomers ; the hall where the eloquence of 
Stratford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious 
party inflamed with just resentment ; the hall where Charles 
had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid 
courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military 
nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with 
grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The 
gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries 
were crowded by such an audience as rarely has excited the 
fears or emulation of an orator. There were gathered to- 
gether, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and pros- 
perous realm, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, 
the representatives of every science and every art. There 
were seated around the queen the fair-haired daughters of the 
house of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings 
and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle 
which no other country in the world could present. There 
Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with 
emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. 
There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the 
days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Venes; 



232 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

and when, before a senate which had still some show of free- 
dom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa 
There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter arid the 
greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured 
Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the 
thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and 
the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced 
Parr to suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine 
from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition — a 
treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with 
injudicious and inelegant ostentation ; but still precious, 
massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous 
charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret 
plighted his faith. There, too, was she, the beautiful mother 
of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, 
lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the com- 
mon decay. There were the members of that brilliant 
society which quoted, criticized, and exchanged repartees, un- 
der the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there 
the ladies, whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox him- 
self, had carried the Westminster election against palace and 
treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. 

There stood Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes 
and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, 
indeed, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to 
the capacity of his hearers ; but in aptitude of comprehension 
and richness of imagination superior to every orator, ancient 
or modern. 



XL— BURNS. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 

We are far from regarding Burns as guilty before the 
world, as guiltier than the average ; nay, from doubting that 
he is less guilty than one often thousand. Tried at a tribu- 
nal far more rigid than that where the Plebiscita of common 
civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us even 
then less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But 
the world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men ; 
unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as 
the substance. It decides like a court of law by dead stat- 



PERSONAL VINDICATION. 233 

ules ; and not positively but negatively, less on what is done 
right, than on what is, or is not, done wrong. Not the few 
inches of reflection from the mathematical orbit, which are 
so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diam- 
eter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a 
planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system ; or it 
may be a city hippodrome ; nay, the circle of a ginhorse, its 
diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of deflec- 
tion only are measured ; and it is assumed that the diam- 
eter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield the 
same ratio when compared with them. Here lies the root of 
many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rous- 
seaus, which one never listens to with approval. Granted, 
the ship comes into harbor with shrouds and tackle damaged , 
and the pilot is therefore blameworthy ; for he has not been 
all-wise and all-powerful ; but to know how blameworthy, 
tell us first whether his voyage has been round the globe, or 
only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs. 

With our hearers in general, with men of right feeling 
anywhere, we are not required to plead ibr Burns. In pity- 
ing admiration, he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far 
nobler mausoleum than that one of marble ; neither will his 
works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. 
While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty 
rivers through the country of thought, bearing fleets of traf- 
fickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves ; this little 
Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye ; for this also is 
of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from 
the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current into the 
light of day ; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink 
of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! 



XII.— PERSONAL VINDICATION. 

MIRABEAU. 

What have I done that was so criminal ? I have wished 
that my order were wise enough to give to-day what will 
infallibly be wrested from it to-morrow ; that it should re- 
ceive the merits and glory of sanctioning the assemblage of 
the Three Orders, which all Provence loudly demands. This 



234 THE 1300K OF ELOQUENCE. 

is the crime of your " enemy of peace." Or rather I have 
ventured to believe that the people might be in the right. 
Ah, doubtless, a patrician soiled with such a thought deserves 
vengeance ! But I am still guiltier than you think ; for it is 
my belief that the people which complains is always in the 
right ; that its indefatigable patience invariably waits the 
uttermost excesses of oppression, before it can determine on 
resisting ; that it never resists long enough to obtain complete 
redress ; and does not sufficiently know that to strike its ene- 
mies into terror and submission, it has only to stand still, 
that the most innocent as the most invincible of all powers is 
the power of refusing to do. I believe after this manner : 
punish the enemy of peace ! 

Disinterested " friends of peace !" I have appealed to 
your honor, and summon you to state what expressions of 
mine have offended against either the respect we owe to tho 
royal authority, or to the nation's right ? Nobles of Provence, 
Europe is attentive ; weigh well your answer. Men of God, 
beware ; God hears you ! And if you do not answer, but 
keep silence, shutting yourselves up in the vague declama- 
tions you have hurled at me, then allow me to add one 
word. 

In all countries, in all times, aristocrats have implacably 
persecuted the people's friends ; and if, by some singular 
combination of fortune, there chanced to exist such a one in 
their own circle, it was he above all whom they struck at, 
eager to inspire wider terror by the elevation of their victim. 
Thus perished the last of the Gracchi by the hands of the 
patricians ; but, being struck with the mortal stab, he flu tig 
dust towards heaven, and called on the Avenging Deities ; 
and from this dust sprang Marius, — Marius, not so illustrious 
for exterminating the Cimbri. as for overturning in Rome the 
tyranny of the Noblesse ! 



XIII.— THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

ALISON. 

The glory of the conqueror is nothing new ; other ages 
have been dazzled with the phantom of military renown ; 
other nations have bent beneath the yoke of foreign oppres- 



THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 235 

sion, and other ages have seen the energies of mankind wither 
before the march of victorious power. It has been reserved 
for our age alone to witness — it has been the high prerogative 
of Wellington alone to exhibit, — a more animating spectacle ; 
to behold power applied only to the purposes of beneficence ; 
victory made the means of moral renovation, conquest be- 
come the instrument of moral resurrection. Before the march 
of his victorious power we have seen the energies of the 
world revive ; we have heard his triumphant voice awaken 
a fallen race to noble duties, and recall the remembrance of 
their pristine glory ; we have seen his banners waving over 
the infant armies of a renovated people, and the track of his 
chariot-wheels followed, not by the sighs of a captive, but the 
blessings of a liberated world. We may w^ell say a liberated 
world ; for it was his firmness which first opposed a barrier 
to the hitherto irresistible waves of Gallic ambition ; it was 
his counsel which traced out the path of European deliver- 
ance, and his victories which reanimated the all but ex- 
tinguished spirit of European resistance. It was from the 
rocks of Tores Vedras that the waves of French conquest first 
permanently receded. When the French legions, in appa- 
rently invincible strength, were preparing for the fight of 
Borodino, they were startled by the salvos from the Russian 
lines, which announced the victory of Salamanca. And when 
the Russian army were marching in mournful silence round 
their burning capital, and the midnight sky was illuminated 
by the flames of Moscow, a breathless messenger brought the 
news of the fall of Madrid, and the revived multitude be- 
held in the triumph of Wellington, and the capture of the 
Spanish capital, an omen of their own deliverance and the 
rescue of their own metropolis. Nor were the services of 
the Duke of Wellington of less vital consequence in later 
times. When the tide of victory had ebbed on the plains of 
Saxony, and European freedom quivered in the balance, at 
the Congress of Prague, it was Wellington that threw his 
sword into the beam by the victory of Victoria, it w r as the 
shout of the world at the delivered peninsula which termina- 
ted the indecision of the cabinet of Vienna. 



236 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XIV.— FRANCE AND THE REPUBLIC. 

BERRYER. 

Can you suppose that I did not ask myself in February, 
1848, why a great nation like France, able to boast of so 
many able men, should not govern itself? I asked myself 
the question, but I did not for a moment hesitate for an an- 
swer, as 1 knew only too well what it was for an old society 
to be subjected to a Republic necessarily at variance with its 
hopes, its traditions, and its habits, and which could only 
excite rancor and discontent. 

Yes, I say that the Republic is incompatible with the old 
society of Europe — is utterly unsuited to the genius, wants, 
manners, and feelings of a nation of thirty millions of inhab- 
itants, closely packed together in the same territory, and 
whose ancestors have been, for centuries, governed by kings. 
A great authority has been named to us to-day — Napoleon. 
Napoleon, it has been said, when at St. Helena, spoke in favor 
of the Republic, and predicted it for Europe. No, no, do not 
believe that such was his intention. What ! that master 
mind who had done so much to gather together the scattered 
fragments around him, and to reconstitute society in France, 
he to praise the Republic ! Not so ; but when the great 
genius beheld his work destroyed by the force of coalesced 
Europe — if, then, he evoked the Republic — if he uttered the 
words, " France will be Republican or Cossack !'' — it was 
not as a prediction that he so spoke, but as a malediction. 
Yes, it was a malediction from the lips of a great man fallen, 
and nothing else. And that other great man, Mirabeau — the 
mighty orator to move the listening senate and the masses — he 
who had so shaken, from the tribune, the government to its 
centre — when he had exhausted his remaining strength in 
endeavoring to reconstruct the ruin which he had made, 
what was his cry of despair, when he felt the wings of death 
flinging their darkest shadow around him ? "I carry with 
me," cried he, " the monarchy ; the factions will dispute, 
amongst themselves, its shreds and remnants." History has 
appreciated, as they deserved, the testamentary exclamations 
of the two great men I have mentioned. Both of them, wh > 
disposed of a whole century and a whole people by the me*e 
force of their genius, felt the task at least too ponderous 1 )r 
their strength, and in the agony of their disappointment t> ey 



ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 237 

exclaimed : — " Authority is gone, anarchy is entered on pos- 
session. God only can again collect together the scattered 
ruins." 



XV.— ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 

LAMARTINE. 

What occupies all minds is the fear that the fanaticism 
of certain men may mistake a duty, and, attaching themselves 
to the heirs — I do not say of other persons' glory, for glory is 
a matter to which relationship gives no right, but to that 
fame which carries away so easily a nation like ours — may 
create what you and what I myself look on as a danger. Is 
such a danger real ? I cannot say. It is not given to me 
more than to you to lift up the veil of the future ; but per- 
mit me to say, that I am convinced that the heirs of whom I 
speak, do not think of any attempt at usurpation ; they have 
declared it themselves in this tribune, and I believe their 
word, as honest men. No, they have no thought of that 
kind ; but around them there are groups of men, such as are 
always ready to nutter about supposed ambitions, and who 
would be disposed to turn to the profit of bad passions the 
greatest of our glories. But I say that these men would find 
themselves mistaken. To effect an 18th Brumaire. two 
things are necessary — long years of terror behind, and in 
prospect the victories of Marengo and the Pyramids. But at 
present, there is neither the one nor the other. The real 
danger of the Republic of February, is its passage through 
the perilous reflux which follows all revolutions. I will not 
affirm that France is not republican ; I am perfectly con- 
vinced that if France is not yet republican by her habits, if 
she is still monarchical by her vices, she is republican by her 
ideas. Think of the monarchy falling to pieces before a trib- 
une not far distant from that in which I now speak ; think 
of the enthusiasm of the people saluting the magnificence of 
the inauguration of the Republic, which cost neither a regret 
nor a drop of blood, and which brought with it so many 
hopes to be realized, not all at once, but with the slowness 
and maturity which effect great things in life. That inaug- 
uration captivated all hearts, and if I brought to this tribune 
the confidential declarations of the heads of the great monar* 



238 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

chical parties, you would be convinced, as I am, that at that 
great period at which men elevate themselves above all per- 
sonal considerations, there was in all minds but a single sen- 
timent — a sincere, loyal, and complete acceptance of the Re- 
public' 



XVI— THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE. 

CHATEAUBRIAND. 

There is nothing beautiful, sweet, or grand in life, but in 
its mysteries. The sentiments which agitate us most strong- 
ly are enveloped in obscurity ; modesty, virtuous love, sincere 
friendship, have all their secrets, with which the world must 
not be made acquainted. Hearts which love, understand 
each other by a word ; half of each is at all times open to 
the other. Innocence itself is but a holy ignorance, and the 
most ineffable of mysteries. Infancy is only happy, because 
it as yet knows nothing ; age miserable, because it has noth- 
ing more to learn. Happily for it, when the mysteries of life 
are ending, those of immortality commence. 

If we turn to the understanding, we shall find that the 
pleasures of thought also have a certain connection with the 
mysterious. To what sciences do we unceasingly return ? 
To those which always leave something still to be discovered, 
and fix our regards on a perspective which is never to ter- 
minate. If we wander in the desert, a sort of instinct leads 
us to shun the plains where the eye embraces at once the 
whole circumference of nature, to plunge into forests, those 
forests the cradle of religion, whose shades and solitudes are 
filled with the recollections of prodigies, where the ravens 
and the doves nourished the prophets and fathers of the 
Church. If we visit a modern monument, whose origin or 
destination is unknown, it excites no attention ; but if we 
meet on a desert isle, in the midst of the ocean, with a muti- 
lated statue pointing to the west, with its pedestal cov- 
ered with hieroglyphics, and worn by the winds, what 
a subject of meditation is presented to the traveller ! 
Everything is concealed, everything is hidden in the uni- 
verse. Man himself is the greatest mystery of the whole. 
Whence comes the spark which we call existence, and 
in what obscurity is it to be extinguished ? The Eternal 



THE IMPEACHMENT OF HASTINGS. 239 

has placed our birth, and our death, under the form of two 
veiled phantoms, at the two extremities of our career ; the 
one produces the inconceivable gift of life, which the other is 
ever ready to devour. 



XVIL— IN RELATION TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF 
HASTINGS. 



I trust, sir, that the season of impunity has passed away. 
I cannot help indulging the hope that this House will vindi- 
cate the insulted character of justice ; that it will exhibit 
its true quality, essence, and purposes ; that it will demon- 
strate, it to be, in the case before us, active, inquisitive, and 
avenging. 

I have heard, sir, of factions and parties in this House, and 
know that they exist. There is scarcely a subject upon 
which we are not broken and divided into sects. The prerog- 
atives of the crown find their advocates among the represen- 
tatives of the people. The privileges of the people find op- 
ponents in the House of Commons itself. The measures of 
every minister are supported by one body of men, and 
thwarted by another. Habits, connections, parties, all lead 
to a diversity of opinion. But, sir, when inhumanity presents 
itself to our observation, it finds no division among us. We 
attack it as our common enemy, and conceiving that the 
character of the country is involved in our zeal for its ruin, 
we quit it not till it is completely overthrown. It is not 
given to this House, to behold the objects of its compassion 
and benevolence in the present extensive inquiry, as it was 
to the officers who relieved them, and who so feelingly de- 
scribed the extatic emotions of gratitude in the instant of de- 
liverance. We cannot behold the workings of their hearts, 
the quivering lips, the trickling tears, the loud, yet tremu- 
lous joys of the millions, whom our vote will forever save 
from the cruelty of corrupted power. But, though we can- 
not directly see the effect, is not the true enjoyment of our 
benevolence increased, by its being conferred unseen ? Will 
not the omnipotence of Britain be demonstrated, to the won- 
der of nations, by stretching its mighty arm across the deep, 



240 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

and saving by its fiat distant millions from destruction ? 
And will the benedictions of the people thus saved dissipate 
in empty air? No. They will not. If I may dare to use 
the figure, they will constitute heaven itself their proxy, to 
receive for them the blessings of their pious thanksgiving, 
ind the prayers their gratitude will dictate. 



XVIIL— GENIUS. 

E. L. BULWER. 

Man's genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing ; 
when the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that 
must be appeased. They who command but the ideal, en- 
joy ever most the real. See the true artist, when abroad in 
men's thoroughfares, ever observant, ever diving into the 
heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest of the compli- 
cated truths of existence — descending to what pedants would 
call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the 
social coil he can disentangle a grace. And for him each 
wiry gossamer floats in the gold of the sunlight. Know you 
not, that around the animalcule that sports in the water, 
there shines a halo, as around the star that revolves in 
bright pastime through the space ? True art finds beauty 
everywhere. In the street, in the market-place, in the 
hovel, it gathers food for the hive of its thoughts. In the 
mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected pearls for the 
wreath of song. Who ever told you that Raffaele did not 
enjoy the life without, carrying everywhere with him the onn in- 
ward idea of beauty, which attracted and embedded in its own 
amber every straw that the feet of the dull man trampled 
into mud ? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for 
its prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through 
brake and jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to 
its unwitnessed cave, so Genius searches through wood and 
waste untiringly and eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve 
strained to speed and strength, for the scattered and flying 
images of matter, that it seizes at last with its mighty talons, 
and bea^s away with it into solitudes no footstep can invade. 
Go, seek the world without ; it is for art the inexhaustible 
pasture-ground and harvest to the world within. 



HOPE FOR ITALY. 241 

xix.— hope for Italy. 

L. MARIOTTT. 

The French, wanting aid from every quarter, hailed the 
awakening of Italy. They gave her a standard ; they girt 
her sons with the weapons of war ; they seated them in sen- 
ates and parliaments. They dusted the iron crown of the 
Lombards, and placed it on the brow of one of her islanders. 
The Italians started up ; they believed, they followed, they 
fought. Deceived by the French, they turned to the Austri- 
an^ — betrayed by the Austrians, they came back to the 
French. There ensued a series of deception and perfidy, of 
blind confidence and disappointment ; and when the Italians, 
weary, dejected, and ravaged, lay down abandoned to their 
bitter reflections, an awful truth shone in its full evidence — 
the only price for torrents of blood — that beyond the Alps 
they had nothing but enemies ! The reaction was long and 
severe. To those few years of raving intoxication, lethargy 
succeeded, and nothingness. The sword was taken from the 
side of the brave, the lips of the wise were closed ; all was 
settled, and silenced, and fettered, but thought. Though' 
remained anxious, sleepless, rebellious ; with a grim, severe- 
monitor behind — Memory ; and a rosy syren before — Hope, 
always within its reach, always receding from its embrace ; 
and it sat a tyrant of the soul, preyed upon the heart of the 
young, of the brave, of the lovely, choosing its victims with 
the cruel sagacity of the vampire, and it strewed their 
couches with thorns, and sprinkled their feasts with poison, 
and snatched from their hands the cup of pleasure. 

" Italians," was the cry, "remember what you have been, 
what you are, what you must be. Is it thus, on the dust of 
heroes, is it in the fairest of lands, that you drag on the days 
of abjectness ? Will you never afford a better spectacle to 
the nations than masquerades and processions of monks ? 
Will you never go out among strangers, except as fiddlers and 
limners ? England and France are subduing deserts and 
oceans ; Germany flourishes in science and letters. The 
sons of the earth are snatching from your hands the sceptre 
of the arts. What is to become of Italy ? Shall her name 
be buried under these ruins, t ) which you cling with the 
fondness of a fallen noble, prouder of the escutcheon and of 
the portraits of his ancestors, in proportion as he degenerates 

11 



242 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

from them ? Shall it be said of her sons that they have 
made their own destiny, and they groan under a yoke they 
have merited ?" 

But God has, at last, mercy on long-enduring Italy ! Her 
princes may yet desert her. Her Pope, even if infallible, 
is not immortal. But God is eternal, and is with her. Hap- 
py, if she learns to trust in Him and herself alone ! Her 
sorrow has been weighed : her fate is mature. Kings and 
pontiffs may now work it out. It is not they, however, that 
prepared it. The Spirit that is alive within her, comes di- 
rect from the breath of her Maker. The phcBnix has been 
consumed upon her funeral pyre. Her last breath has van- 
ished in the air with the smoke of her ashes ; but the dawn 
breaks ; the first rays of the sun are falling upon the desolate 
hearth ; the ashes begin to heave, and from their bosom the 
new bird springs forth with luxuriant plumage, displaying 
her bold flight, with her eyes fixed on that sun from which 
she derived her origin. 






XX.— PROVINCE OF THE HISTORIAN. 

SCHLEGEL. 

Remarkable actions, great events, and strange catastro- 
phes, are not of themselves sufficient to preserve the admira- 
tion and determine the judgment of posterity. These are 
only to be attained by a nation who have given clear proofs 
that they were not insensible instruments in the hands of des- 
tiny, but were themselves conscious of the greatness of their 
deeds, and the singularity of their fortunes. This national 
consciousness, expressing itself in works of narrative and 
illustration, is History. A people whose days of glory and 
victory have been celebrated by the pen of a Livy, whose mis- 
fortunes and decline have been bequeathed to posterity in 
the pages of a Tacitus, acquires a strange pre-eminence by 
the genius of her historians, and is no longer in any dangei 
of being classed with the vulgar multitude of nations, 
which, occupying no place in the history of human intellect, 
as soon as they have performed their part of conquest or de- 
feat on the stage of the world, pass away from our view and 
sink forever into oblivion. The poet, the painter, or the 



PROTEST AGAINST TURKISH PERFIDY. 243 

sculptor, though endued with all the power and all the magic 
of his art, — though capable of reaching and embodying the 
boldest nights of imagination ; — the philosopher, though he 
may be able to scrutinize the most hidden depth of human 
thought (rare as these attainments may be, and few equals 
as he may find in the society with which he is surrounded), 
can, during the period of his own life, be known and appre- 
ciated only by a few. But the sphere of his influences ex- 
tends with the progress of ages, and his name shines brighter 
and broader as it grows old. Compared with his, the fame 
of the legislator, among distant nations, and the celebrity of 
new institutions, appears uncertain and obscure ; while the 
glory of the conqueror, after a few centuries have sunk into 
the all-whelming, all-destroying abyss of time, is forever fad- 
ing in its lustre, until at length it perhaps affords a subject 
of exultation to some plodding antiquarian, that he should 
be able to discover some glimmerings of a name wh'ch had 
once challenged the reverence of the world. 



XXL— PROTEST AGAINST TURKISH PERFIDY. 

KOSSUTH. 

To-day is the anniversary of our arrival at Kutahja! Ku- 
tahja ! the tomb, where the Sublime Porte has buried us 
alive, whilst speaking to us of hospitality. Pursued by mis- 
fortune we stopped before the threshold of the Mussulman, 
and asked from him, in the name of God, in the name of 
humanity, in the name of his religion, a hospitable asylum, or 
a free passage. The Turkish government had entire liberty 
to receive us or not. It had the right of saying : I will give 
you shelter in a prison, or in some distant place where you 
will be detained and strictly guarded. This is the hospitality 
which Turkey offers you. If it does not please you, hasten 
your departure, rid us of your embarrassing presence. This 
was not said to us. The Sublime Porte deigned to open to 
us its sheltering tent ; it entreated us to cross the threshold. 
and swore by its God and its faith that it would grant us 
hospitality and a sa^e asylum. We trusted ourselves to the 
honor of the Turks. We eat of their bread and of their 
salt ; we reposed under their roof We prayed to God to 



244 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

bless them, and we offered them our courage, our experience 
matured by vicissitudes, and our everlasting gratitude. And 
Hungarians keep their word. 

Look at Bosnia, where Mussulmen, subjects of the Sublime 
Porte, are revolted against it. A handful of Hungarian 
soldiers are in the ranks of its army — it is but a handful, for 
the Porte would not accept more. Well ! who are first upon 
the breach ? who are first in the charge ? who are they who 
never retreat, who advance in the midst of fire and grape-shot, 
bayonet in hand, to victory ? They are this handful of exiles. 
They die for Turkey ; the Hungarian keeps his word. They 
offered us hospitality, and they gave us a prison : they swore 
to us that we should meet with an asylum, and we have 
found banishment. God will judge ; and God is just. We 
have suffered ; but for the sake of not causing embarrass- 
ment, we have been silent. •They begged us to have confi- 
dence. We have shown it. They begged us to wait. We 
have waited long. They said to us, it is only until Austria 
shall succeed in re-establishing that which the despots call 
order (the order of oppression), that which they call tran- 
quillity (the tranquillity of the tomb). 

Well, she has re-established this order, this tranquillity, by 
her executions. She has re-established it so far as to dare to 
provoke Prussia to war ; so far as to dare, trusting to the sup- 
port of her master, the Czar, to encroach upon the nations 
of Europe, to extend her forces from the Baltic to Rome ; so 
far as to threaten Piedmont and Switzerland ; so far as to 
bribe the border provinces of Turkey to revolt, — she has re- 
established this tranquillity, she has even announced its 
re-establishment to the Sublime Porte ; and we are still 
prisoners. 

I most solemnly protest against this act. I appeal from it 
to the eternal justice of God, and to the judgment of all 
humanity. 






XXIL— LESSON TO AMBITION. 



A ground of rejoicing in the downfall of Bonaparte is on 
account of the impressive lesson it has read to Ambition, and 
the striking illustration it has afforded, of the inevitable ten- 



LESSOX TO AMBITION. 245 

deney of that passion to bring to ruin the power and the 
greatness which it seeks so madly to increase. No human 
being, perhaps, ever stood on so proud a pinnacle of worldly 
grandeur, as this insatiable conqueror, at the beginning of 
his Russian campaign. He had done more — he had acquired 
more — and he possessed more, as to actual power, influence, 
and authority, than any individual that ever figured on the 
scene of European story. He had visited, with a victorious 
army, almost every capital of the Continent ; and dictated 
the terms of peace to their astonished princes. He had con- 
solidated under his immediate dominion, a territory and pop- 
ulation apparently sufficient to meet the combination of all it 
did not include ; and interwoven himself with the govern- 
ment of almost all that was left. He had cast down and 
erected thrones at his pleasure, and surrounded himself with 
tributary kings, and principalities of his own creation. He 
had connected himself by marriage with the proudest of the 
ancient sovereigns ; and was at the head of the largest and 
the finest army that was ever assembled to desolate or dispose 
of the world. Had he known where to stop in his aggres- 
sions upon the peace and independence of mankind, it seems 
as if this terrific sovereignty might have been permanently 
established in his person. But the demon by which he was 
possessed urged him on to his fate. He could not bear that 
any power should exist which did not confess its dependence 
on him. Without a pretext for quarrel, he attacked Russia — 
insulted Austria — trod contemptuously on the fallen fortunes 
of Prussia — and by new aggressions, and the menace of more 
intolerable evils, drove them into that league w r hich rolled 
back the tide of ruin upon himself, and ultimately hurled 
him into the insignificance from w 7 hich he originally sprung. 
Without this, the lesson to Ambition would have been 
imperfect, and the retribution of Eternal Justice apparently 
incomplete. It was fitting, that the world should see it 
again demonstrated, by this great example, that the appetite 
of conquest is in its own nature insatiable ; — and that a 
being, once abandoned to that bloody career, is fated to pursue 
it to the end ; and must persist in the work of desolation and 
murder, till the accumulated wrongs and resentments of the 
harassed world sweep him from its face. 



246 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XXIII— THE CATHOLIC RESTRICTIONS. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

I object, sir, to the law, as it stands at present, because it 
is impolitic, and because it is unjust. It is impolitic, because 
it exposes this country to the greatest danger in time of war. 
Can you believe, sir, can any man of the most ordinary turn 
for observation, believe, that the monarchs of Europe mean 
to leave this country in the quiet possession of the high station 
which it at present holds ? Is it not obvious that a war is 
coming on between the governments of law and the govern- 
ments of despotism? — that the weak and tottering race of 
the Bourbons will (whatever our wishes may be) be compelled 
to gratify the wounded vanity of the French, by plunging 
them into a war with England. Already they are pitying 
the Irish people, as you pity the West Indian slaves — already 
they are opening colleges for the reception of Irish priests. 
Will they wait for your tardy wisdom and reluctant liber- 
ality ? Is not the present state of Ireland a premium upon 
early invasion ? Does it not hold out the most alluring invi- 
tation to your enemies to begin ? And if the flag of any hos- 
tile power in Europe is unfurled in that unhappy country, is 
there one Irish peasant who will not hasten to join it ? — and 
not only the peasantry, sir ; the peasantry begin these things, 
but the peasantry do not end them — they are soon joined by 
a power a little above them — and then, after a trifling suc- 
cess, a still superior class think it worthwhile to try the risk : 
men are hurried into a rebellion, as the oxen are pulled into 
the cave of Cacus — tail foremost. The mob first, who have 
nothing to lose but their lives, of which every Irishman has 
nine — then comes the shopkeeper — then the parish priest — 
then the vicar-general — then Dr. Doyle, and, lastly, Daniel 
O'Connell. 

War, sir, seems to be almost as natural a state to mankind 
as peace ; but if you could hope to escape war, is there a 
more powerful receipt for destroying the prosperity of any 
country than these eternal jealousies and distinctions between 
the two religions ? 

But what right have you to continue these rules, sir, these 
laws of exclusion ? What necessity can you show for it ? Is 
the reigning monarch a concealed Catholic ? Is his succes- 
sor an open one ? Is there a Catholic pretender ? If some 



PLEA TO GEORGE IV. IN BEHALF OF THR QUEEN. 247 

of these circumstances are said to have justified the introduc- 
tion, and others the continuation of these measures, why does 
not the disappearance of all these circumstances justify the 
repeal of these restrictions ? If you must be unjust — if it is 
a luxury you cannot live without — reserve your injustice for 
the weak, and not for the strong — persecute the Unitarians, 
muzzle the Ranters, be unjust to a few thousand sectaries, 
not to six millions — galvanize a fro":, don't galvanize a tiger. 



XXIV.— PLEA TO GEORGE IV. IX BEHALF OF THE QUEEN. 

PHILLIPS. 

Who could have thought, that in a foreign land, the rest- 
less fiend of persecution would have haunted the Princess 
Charlotte ? Who could have thought, that in those distant 
climes, where her distracted brain had sought oblivion, the 
demoniac malice of her enemies would have followed ? who 
could have thought that any human form which had a heart, 
would have skulked after the mourner in her wanderings, to 
note and con every unconscious gesture ? Yet such a man 
there was ; who on the classic shores of Como, even in the 
land of the illustrious Roman ; where every stone entombed a 
hero, and every scene was redolent of genius, forgot his name, 
his country, and his calling, to hoard such coinable and rabble 
slander ! Oh, sacred shades of our departed sages ! avert 
your eyes from this unhallowed spectacle ; the spotless ermine 
is unsullied still ; the ark yet stands untainted in the temple, 
and should unconsecrated hand assail it, there is a lightning 
still, which would not slumber ! No, no ; the judgment-seat 
of British law is to be soared, not crawled to; it must be 
sought on an eagle's pinion and gazed at by an eagle's eye 
there is a radiant purity about it, to blast the glance of grov- 
elling speculation. His labor was vain. Sir, the people ol 
England will not listen to Italian witnesses, nor ought they. 
Send back, then, to Italy, those alien adventurers ; away 
with them anywhere from us : they cannot live in England : 
they will die in the purity of its moral atmosphere. 

Meairvvhile during this accursed scrutiny, even while the 
legal blood hounds were on the scent, the last dear stay 
which bound her to the world, parted, — the princess Char 



248 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

lotte died. What must have been that hapless mother's 
misery, when the first dismal tidings came upon her ? The 
darling child over whose cradle she had shed so many tears 
— whose lightest look was treasured in her memory — who. 
amid the world's frown, still smiled upon her — the fair and 
lovely flower, which, when her orb was quenched in tears, 
lost not its filial, its divine fidelity ! It was blighted m its 
blossom — its verdant stem was withered, and in a foreign 
land she heard it, and alone — no, no, not quite alone. The 
myrmidons of British hate were around her, and when her 
heart's salt tears were blinding her, a German nobleman was 
"plundering her letters. Bethink you, sire, if that fair para- 
gon of daughters lived, would England's heart be wrung 
with this inquiry ! Oh ! she would have torn the diamonds 
from her brow, and dashed each royal mockery to the earth, 
and rushed before the people, not in a monarch's, but in 
nature 's majesty — a child appealing for her persecuted mother ! 
and God would bless the sight, and man would hallow it, 
and every little infant in the land who felt a mother's warm 
tear upon her cheek, would turn by instinct to that sacred 
summons. Your daughter in her shroud is yet alive, sire — 
her spirit is amongst us — it rose untombed when her poor 
mother landed — it walks amid the people — it has left the 
angels to protect a parent. 



XXV.— IN DEFENCE OF MR. FINNERTY. 

CURRAX. 

Gentlemen, in order to bring this charge of insolence and 
vulgarity to the test, let me ask you, whether you know of 
any language which could have adequately described the idea 
of mercy denied, when it ought to have been granted, or of 
any phrase vigorous enough to convey the indignation which 
an honest man would have felt upon such a subject ? Let 
me suppose that you had seen the respite given, and that 
contrite and honest recommendation transmitted to that seat 
where mercy was presumed to dwell ; that new and before 
unheard of crimes are discovered against the informer ; that 
the royal mercy seems to relent, and that a new respite is 
sent to the prisoner ; that time is taken, as the learned coun- 



IN DEFENCE OF MR. FINNERTY. 249 

sel for the crown has expressed it, to see whether mercy could 
be extended or not ! that, after that period of lingering delib- 
eration passed, a third respite is transmitted ; that the un- 
happy captive himself feels the cheering hope of being re- 
stored 'to a family he adored, to a character that he had 
never stained, and to a country that he had ever loved ; that 
you had seen his wife and children upon their knees, giving 
those tears to gratitude, which their locked and frozen hearts 
could not give to anguish and despair, and imploring the 
blessings of eternal Providence upon his head, who had 
graciously spared the father and restored him to his children ; 
that you had seen the olive branch sent into his little ark, but 
no sign that the waters had subsided. "Alas ! nor wife, nor 
children more shall he behold, nor friends, nor sacred home 1" 
No seraph mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him forth to 
light and life ; but the minister of death hurries him to the 
scene of suffering and of shame ; where unmoved by the hos- 
tile array of artillery and armed men collected together, to 
secure, or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies with a solemn 
declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath in a 
prayer for the liberty of his country. Let me now ask you, if 
any of you had addressed the public ear upon so foul and mon- 
strous a subject, in what language would you have conveyed 
the feelings of horror and indignation ? — would you have 
stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint ? — would you 
have been mean enough ? — but I entreat your forgiveness — I 
do not think meanly of you ; had I thought so meanly of you, 
I could not suffer my mind to commune with you as it has 
done ; had I thought you that vile and base instrument, 
attuned by hope and by fear into discord and falsehood, from 
whose vulgar string no groan of suffering could vibrate, no voice 
of integrity or honor could speak, let me honestly tell you, I 
should scorn to string my hand across it ; I should have left it 
to a fitter minstrel : if I do not therefore grossly err in my 
opinion of you, I could use no language upon such a subject 
as this, that must not lag behind the rapidity of your feelings, 
and that would not disgrace those feelings, if I attempted to 
describe them. 

11* 



250 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XXVI— THE EVIDENCE OF MR. O'BRIEN. 

CURRAX. 

What is the evidence of O'Brien ? what has he stated ? 
Here, gentlemen, let me claim the benefits of that great 
privilege, which distinguished trial by jury in this coun- 
try from all the world. Twelve men, not emerging from 
the must and cobwebs of a study, abstracted from hu- 
man nature, or only acquainted with its extravagances ; but 
twelve men, conversant with life, and practised in those feel- 
ings which mark the common and necessary intercourse be- 
tween man and man. Such are you, gentlemen ; how, then, 
does Mr. O'Brien's tale hang together ? Look to its com- 
mencement. He walks along Thomas street, in the open 
day (a street not the least populous in the city), and is accost- 
ed by a man, who, without any preface, tells him, he'll be 
murdered belbre he goes half the street, unless he becomes a 
United Irishman ! Do you think this a probable story ? 
Suppose any of you, gentlemen, be a United Irishman, or a 
freemason, or a friendly brother, and that you met ine walk- 
ing innocently along, just like Mr. O'Brien, and meaning no 
harm, would you say, " Stop, sir, don't go further, you'll be 
murdered before you go half the street, if you do not become 
a United Irishman, a freemason, or a friendly brother ?" 
Did you ever hear so coaxing an invitation to felony as this ? 
" Sweet Mr. James O'Brien, come in and save your precious 
life ; come in and take an oath, or you'll be murdered before 
you go half the street ! Do, sweetest, dearest Mr. James 
O'Brien, come in and do not risk your valuable existence." 
What a loss had he been to his king, whom he loves so mar- 
vellously ! Well, what does poor Mr. O'Brien do ? Poor, 
dear man, he stands petrified with the magnitude of his 
danger — all his members refuse their office — he can neither 
run from the danger, nor call for assistance ; his tongue 
cleaves to his mouth ! and his feet incorporate with the pav- 
ing stones — it is in vain that his expressive eye silently im- 
plores protection of the passenger ; he yields at length, as 
greater men have done, and resignedly submits to his fate: 
he then enters the house, and being led into a room, a parcel 
of men make faces at him : but mark the metamorphosis — 
well may it be said, that "miracles will never cease," — he 
who feared to resist in the open air, and in the face of the 



CHEMUTIUS CORDUS'S DEFENCE OF HIS ANNALS. 25 1 

public, becomes a bravo, when pent up in a room, and envi- 
roned by sixteen men ; and one is obliged to bar the door 
while another swears him ; which, after some resistance, is 
accordingly done, and poor Mr. O'Brien becomes a United 
Irishman, for no earthly purpose whatever, but merely to 
save his sweet life ! 



XXVII— CREMUTIUS CORDUS'S DEFENCE OF HIS ANNALS. 

TACITUS. 

The charge, conscript fathers, is for words only ; so irre- 
proachable is my conduct. And what are my words ? Do 
they affect the emperor or his mother, the only persons in- 
cluded in the law of majesty ? It is, however, my crime 
that I have treated the names of Brutus and Cassius with 
respect ; and have not others done the same ? In the num- 
ber of writers, who composed the lives of these eminent 
men, is there one who has not done honor to their memory ? 
Titus Livius, that admirable historian, not more distinguished 
by his eloquence, than by his fidelity, was so lavish in praise 
of Pompey, that Augustus called him the Pompeian : and 
yet the friendship of the emperor was unalterable. Scipio 
and Afranius, with this same Brutus and this very Cassius, 
are mentioned by that immortal author, not indeed as ruf- 
fians and parricides (the appellations now in vogue) ; but as 
virtuous, upright, and illustrious Romans. The verses of 
Bibaculus and Catullus, though keen lampoons on the family 
of the Caesars, are in everybody's hands. Neither Julius 
Caesar nor Augustus showed any resentment at these enven- 
omed productions ; on the contrary they left them to make 
their way in the world. Was this their moderation, or supe- 
rior wisdom ? Perhaps it was the latter. Neglected cal- 
umny soon expires : show that you are hurt, and you give it 
the appearance of truth. 

From Greece I draw no precedents. In that country, not 
only liberty, but even licentiousness was encouraged. He 
who felt the ed^e of satire, knew how to retaliate. Words 
were revenged by words. When public characters have 
passed away from the stage of life, and the applause of 
friendship, as well as the malice of enemies, is heard no 



252 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

more ; it lias ever been the prerogative of history to rejudge 
their actions. Brutus and Cassius are not now at the head 
of their armies : they are not encamped on the plains of 
Philippi : can I assist their cause ? Have I harangued the 
people, or incited them to take up arms ? It is now more 
than sixty years since these two extraordinary men perished 
by the sword : from that time they have been seen in their 
busts and statues : those remains the very conquerors spared, 
and history has been just to their memory. Posterity allows 
to every man his true value and proper honors. You may, 
if you will, by your judgment, affect my life ; but Brutus 
and Cassius will still be remembered, and my name may at- 
tend the triumph. 



XXVIIL— MONOPOLIES. 

SIR JOHN CULPEPER. 

Mr. Speaker, I have but one grievance more to offer you, 
but this one compriseth many. It is a nest of wasps, or 
swarm of vermin which have overcrept the land. I mean 
the Monopolists and Pollers of the people : these, like the 
frogs of Egypt, have gotten possession of our dwellings, and 
we have scarce a room free from them. They sup in our cup. 
They dip in our dish. They sit by our fire. We find them 
in the dyepot, wash-bowl, and powdering tub. They share 
with the butler in his box. They have marked and sealed 
us from head to foot. Mr. Speaker, they will not bate us a 
pin. We may not buy our clothes without their brokage. 
These are the leeches that have sucked the commonwealth 
so hard, that it is almost become hectical. And, sir, some 
of them are ashamed of their right names. They have a 
vizard to hide the brand made by that good law in the last 
parliament of King James : they shelter themselves under 
the name of corporation ; they make bye-laws which serve 
their turn to squeeze us and fill their purses. Unface these, 
and they will prove as bad cards as any in the pack. These 
are not petty-chapmen, but wholesale men. Mr. Speaker, I 
have echoed to you the cries of the kingdom. 



THE POETS THEMES. i'53 



XXIX.— THE POETS THEMES. 

TALFOURD. 

The universe, in its majesty, and man in the plain dignity 
of his nature, are the poet's favorite themes. And is there 
no might, no glory, no sanctity in these ? Earth has her own 
venerableness — her awful forests, which have darkened her 
hills for ages with tremendous gloom ; her mysterious springs 
pouring out everlasting waters from unsearchable recesses ; 
her wrecks of elemental contests ; her jagged rocks, monu- 
mental of an earlier world. The lowliest of her beauties has 
an antiquity beyond that of the pyramids. The evening 
breeze has the old sweetness which it shed over the fields of 
Canaan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The Nile swells 
with its rich waters toward the bulrushes of Egypt, as when 
the infant Moses nestled among them, watched by the sisterly 
love of Miriam. Z ion's hill has not passed away with its 
temple, nor lost its sanctity amidst the tumultuous changes 
around it, nor even by the accomplishment of that awful 
religion of types and symbols which once was enthroned on 
its steeps. The sun to which the poet turns his eye is the 
same which shone over Thermopylae ; and the wind to which 
he listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the armaments 
of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly deprived of fitting themes, to 
whom ocean, earth, and sky are open — who has an eye for 
the mo t evanescent of nature's hues, and the most ethereal 
of her graces — who can "live in the rainbow and play in 
the plighted clouds," or send into our hearts the awful love- 
liness of regions "consecrate to eldest time?" Is there 
nothing in man, considered abstractedly from the distinctions 
of this world — nothing in a being who is in the infancy of an 
immortal life — who is lackeyed by " a thousand liveried angels" 
— who is even " splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave" 
— to awaken ideas of permanence, solemnity and grandeur ? 
Are there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry in the 
midst of death and life — in the desires and hopes which have 
their resting-place near the throne of the Eternal — in affections, 
strange and wondrous in their working, and unconquerable 
by time, or anguish, or destiny ? Such subjects, though not 
arrayed in any adventitious pomp, have a real and innate 
grandeur. 



251 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XXX.— ON THE PROSPECT OF AN INVASION. 

ROBERT HALL. 

By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of 
guilty ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually 
extinguished : the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and 
the free towns of Germany, has completed the catastrophe ; 
and we are the only people in the eastern hemisphere who 
are in possession of equal laws, and a free constitution. Free- 
dom, driven from every spot on the continent, has sought an 
asylum in a country which she always chose for a favorite 
abode : but she is pursued even here, and threatened with 
destruction. The inundation of lawless power, after covering 
the whole earth, threatens to follow us here ; and we are 
most exactly, most critically placed in the only aperture 
where it can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopylae of 
the universe. As far as the interests of freedom are con- 
cerned, the most important by far of sublunary interests, you, 
my countrymen, stand in the capacity of the federal represent- 
atives of the human race ; for with you it is to determine (under 
God) in what condition the latest posterity shall be born ; their 
fortunes are entrusted to your care, and on your conduct at this 
moment depends the color and complexion of their destiny. If 
liberty, after being extinguished on the continent, is suffered to 
expire here, whence is it ever to emerge in the midst of that 
thick night that will invest it ? It remains with you then to 
decide whether that freedom, at whose voice the kingdoms of 
Europe awoke from the sleep of ages, to run a career of virtuous 
emulation in everything great and good ; the freedom which 
dispelled the mists of superstition, and invited the nations to 
behold their God ; whose magic touch kindled the rays of 
genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence ; 
the freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and 
embellished life with innumerable institutions and improve- 
ments, till it became a theatre of wonders ; it is for you to 
decide whether this freedom shall yet survive, or be covered 
with a funeral pall, and wrapped in eternal gloom. It is 
not necessary to await your determination. In the solicitude 
you feel to prove yourselves worthy of such a trust, ever) 
thought of what is affecting your welfare, every apprehension 
of danger must vanish, and you are impatient to mingle in 
the battle of the civilized world. Go then, ye defenders of 



UNIVERSALITY OF CONSCIENCE. 255 

your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen ; 
advance with alacrity into the field, where God himself mus- 
ters the hosts of war. Religion is too much interested in 
your success, not to lend you her aid ; she will shed over this 
enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged 
in the field, many will repair to the closet, many to the 
sanctuary ; the faithful of every name will employ that 
prayer which has power with God ; the feeble hands which 
are unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the 
spirit ; and from myriads of humble, contrite hearts, the 
voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle 
in its ascent to heaven with the shout of battle and the shock 
of arms. 



XXXL-UNIVERSALITY OF CONSCIENCE. 

CHALMERS. 

This theology of conscience has been greatly obscured, but 
never, in any country, or at any period in the history of the 
world, has it been wholly obliterated. We behold the ves- 
tiges of it in the simple theology of the desert ; and, perhaps, 
more distinctly there, than in the complex superstitious of an 
artificial and civilized heathenism In confirmation of this, 
we might quote the invocations to the Great Spirit from the 
wilds of North America. But, indeed, in every quarter of 
the globe, where missionaries have held converse with 
savages, even with the rudest of nature's children — when 
speaking on the topics of sin and judgment, they did not 
speak to them in vocables unknown. And as this sense of a 
universal law and a Supreme Lawgiver never waned into 
total extinction among the tribes of ferocious and untamed 
wanderers — so neither was it altogether stifled by the refined 
and intricate polytheism of more enlightened nations. When 
the guilty Emperors of Rome were tempest-driven by remorse 
and fear, it was not that they trembled before a spectre of 
their own imagination. When terror mixed, which it often 
did, with the rage and cruelty of Nero, it was the theology 
of conscience which haunted him. It was not the su££estion 
of a capricious fancy which gave him the disturbance — but 
a voice issuing from the deep recesses of a moral nature, as 



256 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

stable and uniform throughout the species as is the material 
structure of humanity ; and in the lineaments of which we 
may read that there is a moral regimen among men, and 
therefore a moral governor who hath instituted, and who 
presides over it. Therefore it was that these imperial des- 
pots, the worst and haughtiest of recorded monarchs, stood 
aghast at the spectacle of their own worthlessness. 

This is not a local or a geographical notion. It is a uni- 
versal feeling — to be found wherever men are found, be- 
cause interwoven with the constitution of humanity. It is 
not, therefore, the peculiarity of one creed or of one country. 
It circulates at large throughout the family of man. We 
can trace it in the theology of savage life ; nor is it wholly 
overborne by the artificial theology of a more complex and 
idolatrous paganism. Neither crime nor civilization can ex- 
tinguish it ; and, whether in the " conscientia scelerum" of 
the fierce and frenzied Catiline, or in the tranquil contem- 
plative musings of Socrates and Cicero, we find the impres- 
sion of at once a righteous and reigning Sovereign. 






XXXII.— ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

FOX. 

It is asked, whether liberty has not gained much of late 
years, and whether the popular branch ought not therefore to 
be content? To this, I answer, that, if liberty has gained 
much, power has gained more. Power lias been indefatiga- 
ble,- and unwearied in its encroachments ; everything has 
run in that direction through the whole course of the present 
reign. Nothing, therefore, I say, has been gained to the people, 
whilst the constant current has run towards the crown ; and 
God knows what is to be the consequence, both to the crown 
and the country. I believe we are come to the last moment 
of possible remedy. I believe that at this moment the ene- 
mies of both are few ; but I firmly believe, that what has 
been seen in Ireland, will be experienced also here ; and that, 
if we are to go in the same career with convention bills and 
acts of exasperation of all kinds, the few will soon become 
the many, and that we shall have to pay a severe retribution 
for our present pride. What a noble lord said some time 



CHARACTER OF JUSTICE. 257 

ago of France, may be applicable to this very subject. 
What, said he, negotiate with France ? With men, whose 
hands are reeking with the blood of their sovereign ? What, 
shall we degrade ourselves by going to Paris, and there ask- 
ing in humble diplomatic language to be on good understand- 
ing with them ? Gentlemen will remember these lofty 
words ; and yet we have come to this humiliation ; we have 
negotiated with France ! and I shall not be surprised to see 
the noble lord himself going to Paris, not at the head of his 
regiment, but on a diplomatic commission to those very regi- 
cides, to pray to be on a good understanding with them. 
Shall we then be blind to the lessons, which the events of 
the world exhibit to our view ? Pride, obstinacy, and insult, 
must end in concessions, and those concessions must be hum- 
ble in proportion to our unbecoming pride. 



XXXIII— CHARACTER OF JUSTICE. 

SHERIDAN. 

Mr. Hastings, in the magnificent paragraph which con- 
cludes this communication, says, " I hope it will not be a de- 
parture from official language to say, that the majesty of 
justice ought not to be approached without solicitation. She 
ou^ht not to descend to inflame or provoke, but to withhold 
her judgment, until she is called on to determine." But, 
my lords, do you, the judges of this land, and the expounders 
of its rightful laws, do you approve of this mockery, and call 
it the character of justice, w r hich takes the form of right to 
excite wrong ? No, my lords, justice is not this halt and 
miserable object ; it is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian 
pa god ; it is not the portentous phantom of despair ; it is not 
like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and 
found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness, and 
political dismay ! Xo, my lords. In the happy reverse of 
all this, I turn from the disgusting caricature to the real im- 
age ! Justice I have now before me, august and pure ! the 
abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and 
the aspirings of men ! where the mind rises, where the heart 
expands ; where the countenance is ever placid and benign ; 
where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate ; to 



258 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

hear their cry and to help them ; to rescue and relieve, to 
succor and save ; majestic from its mercy ; venerable from its 
utility ; uplifted, without pride ; firm, without obduracy ; be- 
neficent in each preference ; lovely, though in her frown ! 

On that justice I rely ; deliberate and sure, abstracted 
from all party purpose and political speculation, not on 
words, but on facts. You, my lords, who hear me, I conjure, 
by those rights it is your best privilege to preserve ; by that 
fame it is your best pleasure to inherit ; by all those feelings 
which refer to the first term in the series of existence, the 
original compact of our nature — our controlling rank in the 
creation. This is the call on all, to administer to truth and 
equity, as they would satisfy the laws and satisfy themselves 
— with the most exalted bliss possible or perceivable for our 
nature, the self- approving consciousness of virtue, when the 
condemnation we look for will be one of the most ample 
mercies accomplished for mankind since the creation of the 
world ! 



XXXIV.— THE HOUR OF DESTINY. 

DUBLIN NATION. 

The last plank has now, indeed, been shivered, to which 
we clung with such despairing faith. The last drop added to 
the cup of insult and misery, and it has overflowed. Men 
of Ireland, the hour of trial and deliverance has at last been 
struck by Providence. Calmly contemplate all that God, hu- 
manity, and your outraged country now demand of you, and 
then resolutely dare, heroically conquer, or bravely die. 
What have you to fear ? Nothing in Heaven, for you are 
justified before God. You may kneel by your uplifted battle- 
flag, and call Hirn to witness how you have endured every 
wrong— suffered, unrevenged, every infamy — and sought re- 
dress only with streaming eyes and clasped hands, and pas- 
sionate prayers for justice ! justice ! The cry has gone up to 
heaven, and entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, 
but it could not melt the heart of man. We appeal to God, 
then, in the day of battle : we claim his vengeance for our 
wrongs ; for has he not said : " Vengeance is mine, and I 
will repay, saith the Lord ?" Do you fear the judgment of 

i very nation cheers you on 



THE HOUR OF DESTINY. 259 

with words of hope and sympathy and encouragement. Up- 
lift your battle-flag, and from the two hemispheres, and 
across the two oceans, not words alone, but brave hearts and. 
armed hands will come to aid you. 

Ireland ! Ireland ! it is no petty insurrection — no local 
quarrel — no party triumph that summons you to the field. 
The destinies of the world — the advancement of the human 
race — depend now on your courage and success ; for if you 
have courage, success must follow ! Tyranny, and despot- 
ism, and injustice, and bigotry, are gathering together the 
chains that have been flung off by every other nation of 
Europe, and are striving to bind, them upon us — the ancient, 
brave, free Irish people. It is a holy war to which we are 
called — a war against all that is opposed to justice and hap- 
piness and freedom. Conquer, and tyranny is subdued for- 
ever. It is a death-struggle now between the oppressor and 
the slave — between the murderer and his victim. Strike ! — 
strike ! Another instant, and his foot will be upon your 
neck — his dagger at your heart. Will he listen to prayers ? 
Will he melt at tears ? We have looked to heaven, and 
earth, and asked, " Is there no way to save Ireland Out by 
this dark path ?" We have taken counsel of misery, and 
famine, and plague, and said, " Will ye not plead for us ? 
Will not horror grant what justice denies ?" But they die ! 
— they die ! The strong men, and the mothers, and the pale 
children, down they fall, thousands upon thousands — a death- 
ruin of human corses upon the earth, and their groans vi- 
brate with a fearful dissonance through the country, and 
their death-wail shrieks along the universe, but no pity dims 
the eye of the stern murderer who watches their agonies. 

Then arose a band of martyrs, and they stood between the 
living and the dead, and preached the truth, such as the 
world has known from the beginning, only they preached it 
more eloquently, for they were young and gifted, and genius 
burned in their eyes, and patriotism in their hearts — and 
God has filled these young noble spirits with a lofty enthusi- 
asm for the divinest purpose — the regeneration of their coun- 
try. But what care they for genius, or virtue, or patriotism ? 
— these iron machines, called governments, who " grind 
down men's bones to a pale unanimity." So they trembled 
at the voices of these young preachers, and strove to crush 
them by cunning and ingenious tortures that made life more 
terrible even than death ; and soon there were noble limbs 



260 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

writhing in prison cells ; and proud hearts beating in ignomin- 
ious exile. And now with the groans of the dying, there 
went up from our fatal land the shrieks of despairing 
mothers, and the weeping of young wives left desolate by 
lonely hearths, and the bewildered cries of orphaned children 
when they heard they had no father. 



XXXV.— THE SAME— CONTINUED. 

DUBLIN NATION. 

What then ? Is there no hope ? Will ye drag on a 
wretched existence, degraded in the eyes of Europe — making 
Ireland a by-word amongst the nations ? Will ye sutler 
these things, that so your children may rise up in alter years 
and say, — Was it thus, and thus, when ye were young men, 
and ye never lifted your arms to prevent it ? Did ye sell not 
only the lives of your brothers, but also the honor of your 
country ? Have ye left nothing but a heritage of shame ? 
No ! God has not utterly forsaken us. He has left us one 
path, but one. There is no other. You must march on it, 
or the ruin of your country, the death of the living, and the 
vengeance of the unavenged dead will be on your souls. But 
here solemnly we acquit the English people of all participation 
in forcing on us this dread lul alternative — slavery or war. 
Not the brave, generous, English people, but the tyrant, im- 
becile ministry are guilty of thus recklessly plunging their 
own nation and ours into the murderous collision. 

One way is indeed yet left, one noble way, and a halle- 
lujah of praise might rise to heaven in place of the clash of 
arms and the groans of the dying. Let the dueen come with 
all the proud prerogatives of royalty. Let her unbar the 
prison-gates, restore the exiles to their homes, restore their 
rights to a nation. A woman can yet save thousands from 
destruction. If she will not, then amongst the miserable in 
the kingdom, there will be one more miserable than all. 
That Q,ueen upon her throne — a crowned Medea — with the 
diamonds on her brow, but the blood of her people, her chil- 
dren, on her soul. Oh ! let thy heart speak, young Q,ueen, 
there is yet time ; hesitate — and the page of history that 



THE HOUR OF DESTIXY. 261 

notes thy reign will be scarcely ligible to posterity, for the 
blood of thy subjects will have stained it. 

Rise, then, men of Ireland, since Providence so wills it. 
Rise in your cities and in your fields, on your green hills, in 
your valleys, by your dark mountain passes, by your rivers 
and lakes, and ocean-washed shores. Rise as a nation. 
England has dissevered the bond of allegiance. Rise, not 
now to demand justice from a foreign kingdom, but to make 
lrelaud an independent kingdom forever. It is no light task. 
God has appointed you. It is a work of trial and temptation. 
Oh ! be steadfast in the trial — be firm to resist the temptation. 
You have to combat injustice, therefore you must yourselves 
be just. You have to overthrow a despot power, but you 
must establish order, not suffer anarchy. Remember, it is 
not against individuals, or parties, or sects, you wage war, but 
against a system ; overthrow — have no mercy on that system. 
Down with it ; down with it, even to the ground ; but show 
mercy to the individuals who are but the instruments of that 
system. You look round upon aland — your own land — trod- 
den down, and trampled, and insulted, and on a persecuted, 
despair ng people. It is your right arm must raise up the 
trampled land — must make her again beautiful, and stately, 
and rich in blessings. Elevate that despairing people, and 
make them free and happy ; but teach them to be majestic 
in their force, generous in their clemency, noble in their 
triumph. It is a holy mission. Holy must be your motives 
and your acts, if you would fulfil it. Act as if your soul's 
salvation hung on each deed, and it will, for we stand already 
in the shadow of eternity. For us is the combat, but not for 
us, perhaps, the triumph. Many a noble heart will lie cold 
many a throbbing pulse will be stilled, ere the cry of victory 
will arise ! It is a solemn thought, that now is the hour of 
destiny, when the fetters of seven centuries may at last be 
broken, and by you, men of this generation ; by you, men of 
Ireland ! You are God's instruments ; many of you must be 
freedom's martyrs. Oh ! be worthy of the name ; and as 
you act as men, as patriots, and as Christians, so will the 
blessing rest upon your life here, when you lay it down a 
sacrifice for Ireland upon the red battle-field. 



262 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XXXVL— VINDICATION FROM TREASON. 

m'manus. 

My lords, I trust I am enough of a Christian, and enough 
of a man, to understand the awful responsibility of the ques- 
tion that has been put to me. My lords, standing on this 
my native soil — standing in an Irish court of justice, and 
before the Irish nation, I have much to say why sentence of 
death, or the sentence of the law should not be passed upon 
me. But, my lords, on entering this court, I placed my life 
— and what is of much more importance to me. my honor — 
in the hands of two advocates ; and, my lords, if I had ten 
thousand lives, and ten thousand honors, I would be content 
to place them under the watchful and glorious genius of the 
one, and the high legal ability of the other, — my lords, I am 
content. In that regard I have nothing to say. But I have 
a word to say, which no advocate, however anxious, can utter 
for me. I have this to say, my lords : that whatever part I 
may have taken through any struggle for my country's inde- 
pendence — whatever part I may have acted in that short 
career, I stand before your lordships now with a free heart, 
and with a light conscience, ready to abide the issue of your 
sentence. And now, my lords, perhaps this is the fittest time 
that I may put one sentiment on record, and it is this: — 
Standing, as I do, between this dock and the scaffold, it may 
be now, or to-morrow, or it may be never ; but whatever the 
result may be, I have this sentiment to put on record— that 
in any part I have taken, I have not been actuated by ani- 
mosity to Englishmen ; for I have spent some of the happiest 
and most prosperous days of my life there, and in no part of 
my career have I been actuated by enmity to Englishmen, 
however much I may have felt the injustice of English rule 
in this land. My lords, I have nothing more to say. It i^ 
not for having loved England less, but for having loved Ire- 
land more, that I stand now before you. 



XXXVIL— VINDICATION FROM TREASON 

MEAGHER. 

It is my intention to say a few words only. I desire that 
the last act of a proceeding which has occupied so much of 



VINDICATION FROM TRE VSON. 263 

the public time should be of short duration. Nor have I 
the indelicate wish to close the dreary ceremony of a State 
prosecution with a vain display of words. Did I fear that 
hereafter, when I shall be no more, the country I have tried 
to serve would think ill of me, I might indeed avail myself 
of this solemn moment to vindicate my sentiments and my 
conduct. But I have no such fear. The country will judge 
of those sentiments and that conduct, in a light far different 
from that in which the jury by which I have been convicted 
will view them ; and by the country, the sentence which you, 
my lords, are about to pronounce, will be remembered only 
as the severe and solemn attestation of my rectitude and 
truth. Whatever be the language in which that sentence 
be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, 
and that my memory will be honored. In speaking thus, 
accuse me not, my lords, of an indecorous presumption. To 
the efforts I have made in a just and noble cause, I ascribe 
no vain importance — nor do I claim for those efforts any 
high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen 
so, that those who have tried to serve their country, no mat- 
ter how weak the effort may have been, are sure to receive 
the thanks and blessings of its people. With my country, 
then, I leave my memory — my sentiments — my acts — proud- 
ly feeling that they require no vindication from me this day. 
A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty 
of the crime for which I stood indicted. For this I entertain 
not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them. Influ- 
enced as they must have been by the charge of the Lord 
Chief Justice, they could have found no other verdict. 
What of that charge ? Any strong observations on it, I feel 
sincerely would ill befit the solemnity of this scene; but I 
would earnestly beseech of you, my lord — you who preside 
on that bench — when the passions and prejudices of this hour 
have passed away, to appeal to your own conscience, and to 
ask of it, was your charge, as it ought to have been, impar- 
tial and indifferent between the subject and the crown ? My 
lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and, 
perhaps, it may seal my fate. But I am here to speak the 
truth, whatever it may cost ; I am here to regret nothing I 
have ever done ; — to retract nothing I have ever said. I am 
here to crave, with no lying lip, the life I consecrate to the 
liberty of my country. Far from it, even here — here, where 
the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left their foot- 



264 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

prints in the dust ; here, on this spot, where the shadows of 
death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in 
an unanointed soil opened to receive me — even here, encir- 
cled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the 
perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked, still consoles, 
animates, enraptures me. 

No, I do not despair of my poor old country-— her peace, 
her liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more 
than bid her hope. To lift this island up — to make her a 
benefactor to humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar 
in the world, to restore to her her native powers and her an- 
cient constitution, this has been my ambition, and this ambi- 
tion has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I 
know this crime entails the penalty of death ; but the history 
of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by 
that history, I am no criminal, I deserve no punishment. 
Judged by that history, the treason of which I stand convict- 
ed, loses all its guilt, is sanctioned as a duty, will be en- 
nobled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments, my lord, I 
await the sentence of the Court. Having done what I felt 
to be my duty — having spoken what I felt to be the truth, 
as I have done on every other occasion of my short career, I 
now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my passion, and 
my death — the country whose misfortunes have invoked my 
sympathies — whose factions I have sought to still — whose in- 
tellect I have prompted to a lofty aim — whose freedom has 
been my fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of 
the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought 
and spoke and struggled for her freedom — the life of a young 
heart, and with that life all the hopes, the honors, the endear- 
ments of a happy and an honored home. Pronounce, then, 
my lords, the sentence which the laws direct, and I will be 
prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its 
execution. I hope to be able, with a pure heart and perfect 
composure, to appear before a higher tribunal — a tribunal 
where a judge of infinite goodness as well as of justice will 
preside, and where, my lords, many, many of the judgments 
of this world will be reversed. 



INFLUENCE OF THE DUTCH. 2(33 



XXXVIIL— INFLUENCE OF THE DUTCH. 

BOYTON. 

There is something in the history of the Dutch people 
calculated to attract the interest of every cultivated mind. 
Independent of all mere abstract considerations, we cannot 
but recollect that the brightest passages in British history were 
those in which England and Holland were written in the 
same page — of Elizabeth, the founder of our empire, and the 
vindicator of our faith — of Cromwell, who made the name 
of Englishman respected as ever was that of ancient Roman 
— and the glories of Blenheim, and the laurels of Waterloo, 
were won along with Dutch allies, and against French foes. 
On one occasion alone, were we united with the French 
against the Hollanders ; and abroad or at home, in our foreign 
or our domestic relations, it is the darkest and the basest 
page in the tablets of our histories — I allude to the reign of 
Charles the Second. With a profligate, an unconstitutional, 
and a popish government at home, the name of England 
was dishonored abroad. The Dutch fleets swept the seas, 
our shipping was destroyed even upon the waters of the 
Thames, and for once in our history a foreign fleet arrived 
within a single tide of London bridge. Nor were we ab- 
solved from our shame, until we sought from persecuted 
Holland a Deliverer — (No idea can be conveyed of the en- 
thusiasm with which this declaration was received) — from 
dishonor abroad and despotism at home. No war can be 
safe but such as is supported by the good-will of the people. 
I am assured from every private account - I see it in forced 
acknowledgment of the hireling press, who, however en- 
slaved to the Government, are constrained to obey the still 
higher behests of the popular will, that in England there is 
a universal reclamation against this w r ar — and, in Ireland — 
in Ireland, what is the feeling ? It has been said by a wise 
heathen, that a good man struggling with adversity is a spec- 
tacle worthy of gods to witness. But a great and temperate 
and wise prince, struggling against unjust aggression — assert- 
ing with firmness, and not without moderation, the unques- 
tionable rights of his subjects — supported by the sacrifices 
and cheered by the affections of a unanimous and devoted 
people, is a spectacle well worthy the admiration of man- 
kind. 

12 



£G0 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

When the Protestants were persecuted for their faith — • 
when they were driven from their habitation — when they 
were driven to the dreadful alternative of misery and debase- 
ment at home, 'or of sorrow and exile abroad — they recollect 
that their great Deliverer came from Holland. They look to 
their people as one people with themselves — that the Irish 
Protestant and the Dutch Protestant achieved the one victory 
at the plains of Aughrim and the waters of the Boyne ; and 
although it should still please their Sovereign to continue this 
unprofitable and unhappy contest, they will still maintain to 
him the loyalty and devotion with which they have ever 
been characterized, and still lend their best efforts for the 
maintenance of his dignity and crown. It will be the part 
of a wise minister to recollect, that at a most dangerous period 
in the history of Ireland, when the bond of English connec- 
tion has dwindled to a thread, when its only security is found 
in the attachment of the Protestants to English rule, that he 
advises a Sovereign to a war condemned by every thinking 
and educated individual of that persuasion ; and with re- 
spect to the lower classes, revolting to the strongest prejudices 
and most powerful emotions of the heart. 



XXXIX.— SPEECH OF GALGACUS TO THE CALEDONIANS. 

TACITUS. 

As often as I reflect on the origin of the war and our neces- 
sities, I feel a strong conviction that this day, and your will, 
are about to lay the foundations of British liberty. For we have 
all known what slavery is, and no place of retreat lies be- 
hind us. The sea even is insecure when the Roman fleet 
hovers around. Thus arms and war, ever coveted by the 
brave, are now the only refuge of the cowardly. In former 
actions, in which the Britons fought with various success 
against the Romans, our valor was a resource to look to, for 
we, the noblest of all the nations, and on that account placed 
in its inmost recesses, unused to the spectacle of servitude, 
had our eyes ever inviolate from its hateful sight We, 
the last of the earth, arid of freedom, unknown to fame, 
have been hitherto defended by our remoteness ; now the 
extreme limits of Britain appear, and the unknown is ever 



SPEF.Cri OF GALGACUS TO THE CALEDONIANS. 267 

regarded as the magnificent. No refuge is behind us, naught 
but the rocks and the waves, and the deadlier Romans : men 
whose pride you have in vain sought to deprecate by moder- 
ation and subservience. The robbers of the globe, when the 
land fails they scour the sea. Is the enemy rich, they are 
avaricious ; is he poor, they are ambitious, the East and the 
West are unable to satiate their desires. Wealth and pov- 
erty are alike coveted by their rapacity. To carry off, mas- 
sacre, seize on false pretences, they call empire ; and when 
they make a desert, they call it peace. 

Do not believe the Romans have the same prowess in war 
as lust in peace. They have grown great on our divisions ; 
they know how to turn the vices of men to the glory of their 
own army. As it has been drawn together by success, so 
disaster will dissolve it, unless you suppose that the Gauls 
and the Germans, and, I am ashamed to say, many of the 
Britons, who now ]end their blood to a foreign usurpation, 
and in their hearts are rather enemies than slaves, can be 
retained by faith and affection. Fear and terror are but 
slender bonds of attachment ; when you remove them, as 
fear ceases terror begins. All the incitements of victory are 
on our side ; no wives inflame the Romans ; no parents are 
there, to call shame on their flight ; they have no country, or 
it is elsewhere. Few in number, fearful from ignorance, 
gazing on unknown woods and seas, the gods have delivered 
them shut in and bound into your hands. Let not their vain 
aspect, the glitter of silver and gold, which neither covers or 
wounds, alarm you. In the very line of the enemy we shall 
find our friends ; the Britons will recognize their own cause ; 
the Gauls will recollect their former freedom ; the other Ger- 
mans will desert them, as lately the Usipii have done. No 
objects of terror are behind them ; naught but empty castles, 
age-ridden colonies ; dissension between cruel masters and 
unwilling slaves, sick and discordant cities. Here is a lead- 
er, an army ; there are tributes and payments, and the 
badges of servitude, which to bear forever, or instantly to 
avenge, lies in your arms. Go forth, then, into the field, and 
think of your ancestors and your descendants. 



268 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XL.— SPEECH OF AGRICOLA TO HIS ARMY IN BRITAIN. 



It is now, my fellow-soldiers, the eighth year of our service 
in Britain. During that time, the genius and good auspices 
of the Roman Empire, with your assistance and unwearied 
labor, have made the island our own. In all our expeditions, 
in every battle, the enemy has felt your valor, and by your 
toil and perseverance the very nature of the country has been 
conquered. I have been proud of my soldiers, and you have 
had no reason to blush for your general. We have carried 
the terror of our arms beyond the limits of any other soldiers, 
or any former general ; we have penetrated to the extremity 
of the land. This was formerly the boast of vainglory, the 
mere report of fame ; it is now historical truth. We have 
gained possession, sword in hand ; we are encamped on the 
utmost limits of the island. Britain is discovered, and by the 
discovery conquered. 

In our long and laborious marches, when we were obliged 
to traverse moors, and fens, and rivers, and to climb steep 
and craggy mountains, it was still the cry of the bravest 
amongst you, When shall we be led to battle ? When shall 
we see the enemy ? Behold them now before you ! They 
are hunted out of their dens and caverns ; your wish is 
granted, and the field of glory lies open to your swords. One 
victory more makes this new world our own ; but remember 
that a defeat involves us all in the last distress. If we con- 
sider the progress of our arms, to look back is glorious ; the 
tract of country that lies behind us, the forests which you have 
explored, and the estuaries which you have passed, are monu- 
ments of eternal fame. But our fame can only last, while 
we press forward on the enemy. If we give ground, if we 
think of a retreat, we have the same difficulties to surmount 
again. The success, which is now our pride, will in that 
case be our worst misfortune. Which of you would not 
rather die with honor, than live in infamy ? But life and 
honor are this day inseparable ; they are fixed to one spot. 
Should fortune declare against us, we die on the utmost limits 
of the world ; and to die where nature ends, cannot be 
deemed inglorious. 

In woods and forests, the fierce and noble animals attack 
the huntsmen and rush on certain destruction ; but the 



INVECTIVE AGAINST ^ESCHINES. 2G9 

% 

timorous herd is soon, dispersed, scared by the sound and 
clamor of the chase. In like manner, the brave and warlike 
Britons have long since perished by the sword. The refuse 
of the nation still remains. They have not stayed to make 
head against you ; they are hunted down ; they are caught 
in the toils. Benumbed with fear, they stand motionless on 
yonder spot, which you will render forever memorable by a 
glorious victory. Here you may end your Labors, and close a 
scene of fifty years by one great, glorious day. Let your 
country see, and let the commonwealth bear witness, if the 
conquest of Britain has been a lingering work, if the seeds of 
rebellion have not been crushed, that we at least have done 
our duty. 



XLL— INVECTIVE AGAINST JSSCHINES. 

DEMOSTHENES. 

When you had obtained your enrolment among our citi- 
zens — by what means I shall not mention — but when you 
had obtained it, you instantly chose out the most honorable 
of employments, that of under-scrivener, and assistant to the 
lowest of our public officers. And when you retired from 
this station, where you had been guilty of all those practices 
you charge on others, you were careful not to disgrace any 
of the past actions of your life. No, by the powers ! — you 
hired yourself to Simylus and Socrates, those deep-groaning 
tragedies, as they w r ere called, and acted third characters. 
You pillaged the ground of other men for figs, grapes, and 
olives, like a fruiterer ; which cost you more blows than ever 
your playing — which was in effect playing for your life ; for 
there was an implacable, irreconcilable war declared between 
you and the spectators, whose stripes you felt so often and so 
severely, that you may well deride those as cowards who are 
inexperienced in such perils. 

Take then the whole course of your life, iEschines, and 
of mine ; compare them without heat or acrimony. You 
taught writing, I learned it : you were an instructor, I was 
the instructed : you danced at the games, I presided over 
them : you wrote as a clerk, I pleaded as an advocate : you 
were an actor in the theatres, I a spectator : you broke down, 
I hissed : you ever took counsel for our enemies, I for oui 



2*70 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

country. In fine, now on this day the point at issue is — Am 
I, yet unstained in character, worthy of a crown ? while to 
you is reserved the lot of a calumniator, and you are in dan- 
ger of being silenced by not having obtained a fifth part of 
the votes. 

I have not fortified the city with stone, nor adorned it 
with tiles, neither do I take any credit for such things. But 
if you would behold my works aright, you will find arms, 
and cities, and stations, and harbors, and ships, and horses, 
and those who are to make use of them in our defence. 
This is the rampart I have raised for Attica, as much as hu- 
man wisdom could effect : with these I fortified, not the Pi- 
rsBus and the city only, but the whole country. I never 
sank before the arms or cunning of Philip. No ! it was by 
the supineness of your own generals and allies that he tri- 
umphed. 



XLIL— RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 



We preach to our congregations, sir, that a tree is known 
by its fruits. By the fruits it produces I will judge your sys- 
tem. What has it done for Ireland ? New Zealand is 
emerging — Otaheite is emerging — Ireland is not emerging — 
she is still veiled in darkness — her children, safe under no 
law, live in the very shadow of death. Has your system of 
exclusion made Ireland rich ? Has it made Ireland loyal ? 
Has it made Ireland free ? Has it made Ireland happy ? 
How is the wealth of Ireland proved ? Is it by the naked, 
idle, suffering savages, who are slumbering on the mud floor 
of their cabins ? In what does the loyalty of Ireland consist ? 
Is it in the eagerness with which they would range them- 
selves under the hostile banner of any invader, for your de- 
struction and for your distress ? Is it liberty when men 
breathe and move among the bayonets of English soldiers ? 
Is their happiness and their history anything but such a 
tissue of murders, burnings, hanging, famine, and disease, as 
never existed before in the annals of the world ? This is a 
system which, I am sure, with very different intentions, and 
different views of its effects, you are met this day to uphold. 
These are the dreadful consequences, which those laws youx 



SECURITIES FROM CATHOLIC IRELAND. 271 

petition prays may be continued, have produced upon Ire- 
land. From the principles of that system, from the cruelty 
of those laws, I turn, and turn with the homage of my whole 
heart, to that memorable proclamation which the head of our 
church — the present monarch of these realms — has lately 
made to his hereditary dominions of Hanover — That no man 
should be subjected to civil incapacities on account of reli' 
gious ojnnions. Sir, there have been many memorable things 
done in this reign. Hostile armies have been destroyed, fleets 
have been captured, formidable combinations have been 
broken to pieces — but this sentiment, in the mouth of a 
king, deserves more than all glories and victories the notice 
of that historian who is destined to tell to future ages the 
deeds of the English people. I hope he will lavish upon it 
every gem which glitters in the cabinet of genius, and so up- 
hold it to the world that it will be remembered when Water- 
loo is forgotten, and when the fall of Paris is blotted out 
from the memory of man. 

Of the Catholic emancipation bill, I shall say, that it will 
be the foundation stone of a lasting religious peace ; that it 
will give to Ireland not what it wants, but what it most 
wants, and without which no other boon will be of any 
avail. 

When this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the reli- 
gious sects of that unhappy country to lay aside their mutual 
hatred, and to live in peace, as equal men should live under 
equal law — when this bill passes, the Orange flag will fall — 
when this bill passes, the Green flag of the rebel will fall — • 
when this bill passes, no other flag will fly in the land of 
Erin than that flag which blends the lion with the harp — 
that flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of freedom 
and of joy — the only banner in Europe which floats over a 
limited king and a free people. 



XLIIL— SECURITIES FROM CATHOLIC IRELAND. 

PHILLIPS. 

Why is it that in the day of peace they demand securities 
from a people who in the day of danger constituted their 
strength ? When were they denied every security that was 



272 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

reasonable? Was it in 1776, when a cloud of enemies, 
hovering on our coast, saw every heart a shield, and every 
hill a fortress ? Did they want securities in Catholic Spain ? 
Were they denied securities in Catholic Portugal ? What is 
their security to-day in Catholic Canada ? Return — return 
to us our own glorious Wellington, and tell incredulous Eng- 
land what was her security amid the lines of Torres Vedras, 
or on the summit of Burrossa ! Rise, libelled martyrs of the 
Peninsula ! — rise from your " gory bed," and give securities 
for your childless parents ! No, there is not a Catholic 
family in Ireland, that for the glory of Great Britain is not 
weeping over a child's, a brother's, or a parent's grave, and 
yet still she clamors for securities! Oh! Prejudice! where 
is thy reason ! Oh ! Bigotry ! where is thy blush ! If ever 
there was an opportunity for England to combine gratitude 
with justice, and dignity with safety, it is the present. Now, 
when Irish blood has crimsoned the cross upon her naval 
dag, and an Irish hero strikes the harp to victory on the 
summit of the Pyrenees. England — England ! do not hesi- 
tate. This hour of triumph may be but the hour of trial ; 
another season may see the splendid panorama of European 
vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glittering 
beneath the ruins of another capital — perhaps of London. 
Who can say it ? A few months since, Moscow stood as 
splendid, as secure. Fair rose the morn on the patriarchal 
city — the Empress of her nation, the queen of commerce, 
the sanctuary of strangers ; her thousand spires pierced the 
very heavens, and her domes of gold reflected back the sun- 
beams. The spoiler came ; he marked her for his victim ; 
and, as if his very glance were destiny, even before the night- 
fall, with all her porrrrr, and wealth, and happiness, she with- 
ered from the world ! A heap of ashes told where once stood 
Moscow ! 



XLIV.— BLESSINGS OF EDUCATION. 

PHILLIPS. 

No doubt, you have all personally considered — no doubt, 
you have all personally experienced, that of all the blessings 
which it has pleased Providence to allow us to cultivate, there 
is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a 



BLESSINGS OF EDUCATION. 273 

heavenlier aspect than education. It is a companion which 
no misfortune can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy 
alienate, no despotism enslave ; at home a friend, abroad an 
introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament; it 
chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and 
government to genius. Without it, what is man ? A splen- 
did slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dig- 
nity of an intelligence derived from Grod, and the degradation 
of passions participated with brutes ; and in the accident of 
their alternate ascendency, shuddering at the terrors of an 
hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope of annihilation. 
What is this wondrous world of his residence ? 

" A mighty maze, and all without a plan" 

a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth, or 
ornament, or order. But light up within it the torch of 
knowledge, and how wondrous the transition ! The seasons 
change, the atmosphere breathes, the landscape lives, earth 
unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens 
display their constellated canopy, and the grand animated 
spectacle of nature rises revealed before him, its varieties 
regulated, and its mysteries resolved ! The phenomena which 
bewilder, the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which 
enslave, vanish before education. Like the holy symbol which 
blazed upon the cloud before the hesitating Constantino, if 
man follow but its precepts, purely, it will not only lead him 
to the victories of this world, but open the very portals of 
omnipotence for his admission. Cast your eye over the mon- 
umental map of ancient grandeur, once studded with the 
stars of empire, and the splendors of philosophy. What erect- 
ed the little state of Athens into a powerful commonwealth, 
placing in her hand the sceptre of legislation, and wreathing 
round her brow the imperishable chaplet of literary fame ? 
what extended Rome, the haunt of banditti, into universal 
empire ? what animated Sparta with that high, unbending, 
adamantine courage, which conquered nature herself, and has 
fixed her in the sight of future ages, a model of public virtue, 
and a proverb of national independence ? What but those 
wise public institutions which strengthened their minds with 
early application, informed their infancy with the principles 
of action, and sent them into the world, too vigilant to be 
deceived by its calms, and too vigorous to be shaken by its 
whirlwinds ! 

1?" 



2*4 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XLV.— WRONGS OF IRELAND. 

GRATTAN. 

Hereafter, when these things shali he history, your age 
of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commer- 
cial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian 
stop to declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell 
into mimic traces of gratitude : they were awed by a weak 
ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury ; and when liberty 
was within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding- 
doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of 
the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell 
down, and were prostituted at the threshold. 

1 will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an 
amendment : neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am 
I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this 
our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of 
liberty ; I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break 
your chains, and contemplate your glory. I never will be 
satisfied as long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a 
link of British chain clanking in his rags : he may be naked, 
he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time is at hand, the 
spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted : and though 
great men should apostatize, yet the cause will live : and 
though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire 
shall outlast the organ w r hich conveyed it, and the breath of 
liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall not die with the 
prophet, but survive him. 



XLVL— ON THE FUNERAL OF HENRIETTA. 

BOSSUET. 

It is not surprising that the memory of a great queen — 
the daughter, the wife, the mother of monarchs — should at- 
tract you from all quarters to this melancholy ceremony ; it 
will bring forcibly before your eyes one of those awful exam- 
ples which demonstrate to the world the vanity of which it 
is composed. You will see in her single life the extremes of 
things : felicity without bounds, miseries without parallel ; a 



TRIAL OF THE CHURCH. 275 

Ioult and peaceable enjoyment of one of the most noble crowns 
in the universe — all that birth and grandeur could confer 
that was glorious — all that adversity and suffering could ac- 
cumulate that was disastrous ; the good cause attended at 
first with some success, then involved in the most dreadful 
disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion long restrained, 
at length reigned triumphant ; no curb there 1o license, no 
laws in ibrce. Majesty itself violated by bloody hands — 
usurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty — a fugi- 
tive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, 
and was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy 
exile. Nine sea-voyages undertaken against her will by a 
queen, in spite of wintry tempests, — a throne unworthily 
overturned, and miraculously reestablished. ' Behold the lesson 
which God has given to kings ! thus does He manifest to the 
world the nothingness of its pomp and. grandeur. If our 
words fail, if language sink< beneath the grandeur of such a 
subject, the simple narrative is more touching than aught 
that words can convey. The heart of a great queen, former- 
"y elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped in 
all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently 
touching language ; and if it is not given to private individ- 
uals to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catas- 
trophe, the King of Israel has supplied the words — "Hear, 
ye great of the earth ! Take lesson, ye rulers of the 
world r 



XLVIL— TRlAL OF THE CHURCH. 

GILFILLAN. 

There is coming upon the church a current of doubt, 
deeper far and darker than ever swelled against her before — 
a current strong in learning, crested with genius, strenuous 
yet calm in progress. It seems the last grand trial of the 
truth of our faith. Against the battlements of Zion a motley 
throng have gathered themselves together. Atheists, pan- 
theists, doubters, open foes, secret foes, and bewildered 
friends of Christianity, are all in the field, although no trum- 
pet has openly been blown, and no charge publicly sounded. 
There are the old desperadoes of infidelity — the last follow- 
ers of Paine and Voltaire ; there is the soberer and stolider 



276 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Owen and his now scanty and sleepy troop ; then follow the 
Communists of France — a fierce but disorderly crew ; fhe 
commentators of Germany come, too, with pickaxes in their 
hands, crying, " Raze, raze it to its foundations !" Then 
you see the garde mobile — the vicious and the vain youth 
of Europe ; and on the outskirts hangs, cloudy and uncertain, 
a small but select band, whose wavering surge is surmounted 
by the dark and lofty crests of Carlyle and Emerson. 
" Their swords are a thousand" — their purposes are various ; 
in this, however, all agree, that historical Christianity ought 
to go down before advancing civilization. Sterling and some 
of his co-mates the merciful cloud of death has removed from 
the fields, while others stand in deep uncertainty, looking in 
agony and in prayer above. 

While thus the foeman is advancing, what is Zion about ? 
Shame and alas ! her towers are well nigh unguarded ; her 
watchmen have deserted their stations, and are either squab- 
bling in the streets with each other, or have fallen asleep. 
Many are singing* psalms, few are standing to their arms. 
Some are railing at the enemy from the safest towers. The 
watchmen who first perceived the danger and gave the alarm, 
almost instantly fell back in death. 

Shall, then, old and glorious b tttlements be trodden down ? 
Between the activity of their foes and the supineness of their 
friends, must they perish ? No ; vain is perhaps the help of 
man, but we, too, will look above. We will turn our eyes 
to the hills whence the aid is expected. Our grand hope as 
to the prospects of the world and the church has long lain 
in the unchanged and the unchangeable love of Christ. As 
long as his great, tremulous, unsetting eye continues, like a 
star, to watch her struggles as the eye of love the tossings of 
disease, we shall not fear. And whenever the time arrives 
for that " Bright and Morning Star" starting from his sphere 
to save his church, he will no longer delay his coming, wheth- 
er in power or in presence. To save a city like Zion, there 
might fall the curtain of universal darkness. That curtain 
shall not fall, but there may, in lieu of it, burst the blaze 
of celestial light ; and who can abide the day of that appear- 
ing ? 



DUTY IH A TIME OF WAR. 277 



XLVTIL— DUTY IX A TIME OF WAR. 

CHALMERS. 

Life is short, and its anxieties are soon over. The glories 
even of the conqueror will soon find their hiding-place in 
the grave. In a few years, and that power which' appals 
the world will feel all the weakness of mortality — the sen- 
tence of all must pursue him — the fate of all must overtake 
him ; he must divest himself of his glories and lie down with 
the meanest of his slaves — that ambition which aspires to 
the dominion of the whole earth, will at last have but a 
spot of dust to repose on — it will be cut short in the midst 
of its triumphs — it will sleep from all its anxieties, and be 
fast locked in the insensibility of death. There the wicked 
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. 

We live in a busy and interesting period. Every year 
gives a new turn to the history of the world, and throws a 
new complexion over the aspect of political affairs. The 
wars of other times shrink into insignificance when com- 
pared with the grand contest which now embroils the whole 
of civilized society. They were paltry in their origin — they 
were trifling in their object — they were humble and insig- 
nificant in their consequences. A war of the last generation 
left the nations of Europe in the same relative situation in 
which it found them ; but war now is on a scale of mag- 
nitude that is quite unexampled in the history of modern 
times. Not to decide some point of jealousy or to secure 
some trifling possessions, it embraces a grander interest — it 
involves the great questions of Existence and Liberty. Every 
war is signalized with the wreck of some old empire, and the 
establishment of a new one — all the visions of romance are 
authenticated in the realities which pass before us — the emi- 
gration of one royal family, the flight and imprisonment of 
another, the degradation of a third to all the obscurity of 
private life — these are events which have ceased to astonish 
us because their novelty is over, and they are of a piece with 
those wonderful changes which the crowded history of these 
few years presents to our remembrance. 

Let us rise in gratitude to Heaven that we stand aloof from 
this theatre of convulsions. Our security depends upon our- 
selves. Xo wisdom, no energy can save us, it we flinch from 
the cause of patriotism and virtue. The strength of a 



278 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

country lies in the heart of its inhabitants. Let this be a day 
of fasting ; but we should remember that to fast is to repent, 
and to repent is to reform. It is not the visionary reform 
of political enthusiasts that I speak of — it is a reform of 
the lives and hearts of individuals — that reform which 
would settle the reign of integrity in the councils of our 
nation, and would settle the influence of piety among our 
families and cottages — that reform which would descend to 
your children, and secure the character of yet future ages — 
that reform of which every great man should give the 
example that every poor man should be proud to imitate — 
that reform which would reconcile all the orders of the com- 
munity, and make them feel that they had but one cause and 
one interest — that reform which would banish prejudice and 
disaffection from the land, and bind to the throne of a beloved 
sovereign the homage of a virtuous and affectionate people. 



XLIX.— ON THE CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE. 

CICERO. 

It is now a long time, conscript fathers, that we have trod 
amidst the dangers and machinations of this conspiracy ; but I 
know not how it comes to pass, the full maturity of all those 
crimes, and of this long-ripening rage and insolence, has now 
broke out during the period of my consulship. Should he 
alone be removed from this powerful band of traitors, it may 
abate perhaps our fears and anxieties for a while, but the 
danger will still remain, and continue lurking in the veins 
and vitals of the Republic : for as men oppressed with a 
severe fit of illness, and laboring under the raging heat of 
a fever, are often at first seemingly relieved by a draught of 
cold water, but afterwards find the disease return on them 
with redoubled fury, in like manner this distemper which has 
seized the commonwealth, eased a little by the punishment 
of this traitor, will from his surviving associates soon assume 
a new force. Wherefore, conscript fathers, let the wicked 
retire ; let them separate themselves from the honest ; let 
them rendezvous in one place. In fine, as I have often said, 
let a wall be between them and us : let them cease to lay 
snares for the consul in his own house ; to beset the tribunal 



A DEFENCE FROM IMTE ACHMENT. 279 

of the city praetor; to invest the senate-house with armed 
ruffians, and to prepare fire-balls and torches for burning the 
city ; in short, let every man's sentiments with regard to the 
public be inscribed on his forehead. This I engage for and 
promise, conscript fathers, that by the diligence of the consuls, 
the weight of your authority, the courage and firmness of 
Roman knights, the unanimity of all the honest, Catiline 
being driven from the city, you shall behold all his treasons 
detected, exposed, crushed, and punished. With these omens, 
Catiline, of all prosperity to the Republic, but of destruction 
to thyself, and all those who have joined themselves with thee 
in all kinds of parricide, go thy way then to this impious and 
abominable war ; while thou, Jupiter, whose religion was 
established with the foundation of this city, whom we truly 
call Stator, the stay and prop of this empire, wilt drive this 
man and his accomplices from thy altars and temples, from 
the houses and walls of the city, from the lives and fortunes 
of us all ; and wilt destroy with eternal punishments, both 
living and dead, all the haters of good me*n, the enemies of 
their country, the plunderers of Italy, now confederated in 
this detestable league and partnership of villany. 



L.— A DEFENCE FROM IMPEACHMENT. 

MARAT. 

I shlddered at the vehement and disorderly movements 
of the people, when 1 saw them prolonged beyond the neces- 
sary point ; in order that these movements should not forever 
fail, to avoid the necessity of their recommencement, I proposed 
that some wise and just citizen should be named, known for 
his attachment to freedom, to take the direction of them, and 
render them conducive to the great ends of public freedom If 
the people could have appreciated the wisdom of that proposal, 
if they had adopted it in all its plenitude, they would have 
swept off", on the day the Bastile was taken, five hundred 
heads from the conspirators. Everything, had this been done, 
would now have been tranquil. For the same reason, I have 
frequently proposed to give instantaneous authority to a wise 
man, under the name of tribune, or dictator, — the title signi- 
fies nothing ; but the proof that I meant to chain him to the 



280 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

public service is, that I insisted that he should have a bullet 
at his feet, and that he should have no power but to strike 
off criminal heads. Such was my opinion ; I have expressed 
it freely in private, and given it all the currency possible in 
my writings ; I have affixed my name to these compositions ; 
I am not ashamed of them ; if you cannot comprehend them, 
so much the worse for you. The days of trouble are not yet 
terminated ; already a hundred thousand patriots have been 
massacred because you would not listen to my voice ; a hun- 
dred thousand more will suffer, or are menaced with destruc- 
tion ; if the people falter, anarchy will never come to an end. 
1 have diffused these opinions among the public ; if they are 
dangerous, let enlightened men refute them with the proofs 
in their hands; for my own part, I declare I would be the 
first to adopt their ideas, and to give a signal proof of my de- 
sire for peace, order, and the supremacy of the laws, when- 
ever I am convinced of their justice. 

Am I accused of ambitious views ? I will not con- 
descend to vindicate myself; examine my conduct; judge 
my life. If I had chosen to sell my silence for profit, I might 
have now been the object of favor to the court. What, on 
the other hand, has been my fate ? I have buried myself in 
dungeons ; condemned myself to every species of danger ; the 
sword of twenty thousand assassins is perpetually suspended 
over me ; I preached the truth with my head laid on the 
block. Let those who are now terrifying you with the shad- 
ow of a dictator, unite with me ; unite with all true patriots, 
press the assembly to expedite the great measures which will 
secure the happiness of the people, and I will cheerfully 
mount the scaffold any day of my life. 



LI.— LIBERTY IN THE REVOLUTION OF 1830. 

ST. CHAMAN9. 

The Revolution of 1830 has lighted anew the torch of 
experience on many controverted points, and I appeal with 
confidence upon them to the many men of good faith who 
exist among our adversaries. They seek like us the good of 
our common country, and the welfare of humanity ; they 
hold that in the charter there was too little political power 



LIBERTY IN THE REVOLUTION OF1830. 231 

conferred upon the people. Let them judge now, for the 
proof has been decisive. They will find that on every occa- 
sion, without one exception, in which political power, unre- 
strained by strict limits, has been conferred upon the people, 
personal liberty has been destroyed : that the latter has lost 
as much as the former has gained. Reflect upon the fate of 
personal freedom under the democratic constitutions which 
promised the greatest possible extension of individual lib- 
erty. Was there liberty under the Constituent Assembly, for 
those who were massacred in the streets, and whose heads 
they carried on the ends of pikes ? Was there liberty for 
the seigniors whose chateaux they burnt, and who saved 
their lives only by flight ? Was there liberty for those who 
were massacred at Avignon, or whom the committee of Ja- 
cobins tore from the bosoms of their families to conduct to 
the guillotine ? Was there liberty for the king, who was not 
permitted to move beyond the barriers of Paris, nor venture 
to breathe the fresh air at the distance of a league from the 
city ? No ; there was liberty only for their oppressors : the 
only freedom was that which the incendiaries, jailers, and as- 
sassins enjoyed. 

Since the Revolution of July, has there been any freedom 
for the clergy, who do not venture to show themselves in the 
streets of Paris, even in that dress which is revered by savage 
tribes ; for the Catholics, who can no longer attend mass but 
at midnight ; for the Judges, who are threatened in the dis- 
charge of their duties by the aspirants for their places ; for 
the Electors, whose votes are overturned with the urns that 
contain them, and who return lacerated and bleeding from 
the place of election ; for the Citizens, arbitrarily thrust out 
of the National Guard ; for the Archbishop of Paris, whose 
house was robbed and plundered with impunity, at the very 
moment when the ministers confessed in the chambers they 
could allege nothing against him; for the officers of all grades, 
even the generals expelled from their situations at the caprice 
of their inferiors ; for the Curates of churches, when the gov- 
ernment, trembling before the sovereign multitude, closed the 
churches to save them from the profanation and sacking of 
the mob ; for the King himself, condemned by their despotism, 
to lay aside the arms of his race ? These evils have arisen 
from confounding personal with political liberty ; a distinction 
which lies at the foundation of these matters. 



282 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



LIT.— THE TRITE CONQUERORS. 



BROUGHAM. 



There is nothing which the adversaries of improvement 
ire more wont to make themselves merry with, than what 
is termed the " march of intellect ;" and here I will confess, 
that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. 
It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It 
is little calculated to describe the operation in question. It 
does not picture an image at all resembling the proceeding 
of the true friends of mankind. It much more resembles 
the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conquer- 
or moves in a march. He stalks onward with the " pride, 
pomp, and circumstance of war" — banners flying — shouts 
rending the air — guns thundering— and martial music peal- 
ing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamenta- 
tions for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peace- 
ful vocation. He meditates and purposes in secret the plans 
which are to bless mankind ; he slowly gathers round him 
those who are to further their execution — he quietly, though 
firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but 
calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of 
ignorance, and torn up by the roots all the weeds of vice. 
His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a 
march — but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to 
laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, 
the scourge of the world, ever won. 

Such men, men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of 
Mankind —I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, 
perhaps, obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have 
gone. I have lound them, and shared their fellowship, 
among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomita- 
bly active French ; I have found them among the persever- 
ing, resolute, industrious Swiss ; I have found them among 
the laborious, the warm-hearted, the enthusiastic Germans ; 
I have found them among the high-minded, but enslaved 
Italians ; and in our own country, God be thanked, their 
numbers everywhere abound, and are every day increasing. 
Their calling is high and holy ; their fame is the prosperity 
of nations ; their renown will fill the earth in after ages ; in 
proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each 
one of these great teachers of the world, possessing his soul 



ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 283 

in peace, performs his appointed course — awaits in patience 
the fulfil merit of the promises, and resting from his labors, 
bequeaths his memory to the generation whom his works 
have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious 
epitaph, commemorating " one in whom mankind lost a 
friend, and no man got rid of an enemy." 



LITL— ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

WILBERFORUE. 

I cannot but persuade myself that whatever difference of 
opinion there may have been, we shall this day be at length 
unanimous. I cannot believe that a British House of Com- 
mons will give its sanction to the continuance of this infer- 
nal traffic, the African slave-trade. We were for a while 
ignorant of its real nature ; but it has now been completely 
developed, and laid open to view in all its horrors. Never 
was there, indeed, a system so big with wickedness and cruel- 
ty ; it attains to the fullest measure of pure, unmixed, unso- 
phisticated wickedness ; and scorning all competition and 
comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undis- 
puted possession of its detestable preeminence. 

But I rejoice, sir, to see that the people of Great Britain, 
have stepped forward on this occasion, and expressed their 
sense more generally and unequivocally than in any instance 
wherein they have ever before interfered. I should in vain 
attempt to express to you the satisfaction with which it has 
filled my mind to see so great and glorious a concurrence, to 
see this great cause triumphing over all lesser distinctions, 
and substituting cordiality and harmony in the place of dis- 
trust and opposition. Nor have its effects amongst ourselves 
been in this respect less distinguished or less honorable. It 
has raised the character of Parliament. Whatever may have 
been thought or said concerning the unrestrained pre valency 
of our political divisions, it has taught surrounding nations, it 
has taught our admiring country, that there are subjects still 
beyond the reach of party. There is a point of elevation 
where we get above the jarring of the discordant elements that 
raffle and agitate the vale below. In our ordinary atmos- 
phere, clouds and vapors obscure the air, and we are the 



284 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

sport of a thousand conflicting winds and adverse currents ; 
but here, we move in a higher region, where all is pure, and 
clear, and serene, free from perturbation and discomposure — 

" As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm ; 
Tho' round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 

Here, then, on this august eminence, let us build the temple 
of benevolence ; let us lay its foundation deep in truth and 
justice, and let the inscription on its gates be, "peace and 
good- will towards men." Here let us offer the first-fruits of 
our prosperity ; here let us devote ourselves to the service of 
these wretched men, and go forth burning with a generous 
ardor to compensate, if possible, for the injuries we have 
hitherto brought on them. Let us heal the breaches we have 
made. Let us rejoice in becoming the happy instruments of 
arresting the progress of rapine and desolation, and of intro- 
ducing into that immense country the blessings of Christianity, 
the comforts of civilized, the sweets of social life. I am per- 
suaded, sir, there is no man who hears me, who would not 
join with me in hailing the arrival of this happy period ; who 
does not feel his mind cheered and solaced by the contempla- 
tion of those delightful scenes. 



LIY.— FUTILITY OF EFFORTS TO STAY REFORM. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

I have spoken so often on this subject, that I am sure both 
you and the gentlemen here present will be obliged to me for 
saying but little, and that favor I am as willing to confer, as 
you can be to receive it. I feel most deeply the event which 
has taken place, because, by putting the two houses of Par- 
liament in collision with each other, it will impede the pub- 
lic business, and diminish the public prosperity. I feel it as 
a churchman, because I cannot but blush to see so many dig- 
nitaries of the church arrayed against the wishes and happi- 
ness of the people. I feel it more than all, because 1 believe 
it will sow the seeds of deadly hatred between the aristocracy 
and the great mass of the people. The loss of the bill I do 



PLEA IN " BARDELL VS. PICKWICK." 285 

not feel, and for the best of all possible reasons — because 1 
have not the slightest idea it is lost. I have no more doubt, 
before the expiration of the winter, that this bill will pass, 
than I have that the annual tax bills will pass, and a greater 
certainty than this no man can have, for Franklin tells us, 
there are but two things certain in this world — death and 
taxes. As for the possibility of the House of Lords prevent- 
ing ere long a reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most 
absurd notion that ever entered into human imagination. I 
do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords 
to stop the progress of reform, reminds me very forcibly of the 
great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent 
Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, 
there set in a great flood upon that town — the tide rose to an 
incredible height — the waves rushed in upon the houses, and 
everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of 
this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived 
upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop 
end pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea- water, 
and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The At- 
lantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up ; but I 
need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic 
Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop, or 
a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. 
Gentlemen, be at your ease —be quiet and steady. You will 
beat Mrs. Partington. 



L V.— PLEA OF SERGEANT BCZFUZ, IN "BARDELL vs. 
PICKWICK." 



CHARLES DICKENS. 



The plaintiff, gentlemen, the plaintiff is a widow ; yes., 
gentlemen, a widow. The late Mr Bardell, after enjoying 
for many years, the esteem and confidence of his sovereign, 
as one of the guardians of his royal revenues, glided almost 
imperceptibly from the world, to seek elsewhere for that 
repose and peace which a custom-house can never afford. 
Sometime before his death he had stamped his likeness upon 
a little boy. With this little boy, the only pledge of her de- 
parted exciseman, Mrs. Bardell shrunk from the world, and 



>-V " 286 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

/y 

courted the retirement and tranquillity of Goswell-street ; and 
here she placed in her front parlor window a written placard, 
bearing this inscription—" Apartments furnished for a single 
gentleman. Inquire within." I entreat the attention of the 
jury to the wording of this document — " Apartments fur- 
nished for a single gentleman !" Mrs. Bardell's opinions of 
the opposite sex, gentlemen, were derived from a long con- 
templation of the inestimable qualities of her lost husband. 
She had no fear — she had no distrust — she had no suspicion 
— all was confidence and reliance. " Mr. Bardell," said the 
widow ; " Mr. Bardell was a man of honor — Mr. Bardell 
was a man of his word — Mr. Bardell was no deceiver — Mr. 
Bardell was once a single gentleman himself; to single 
gentlemen I look for protection, for assistance, for comfort, 
and for consolation — in single gentlemen I shall perpetually 
see something to remind me of what Mr. Bardell was, when 
he first won my young and untried affections; to a single 
gentleman, then, shall my lodgings be let." Actuated by 
this beautiful and touching impulse (among the best impulses 
of our imperfect nature, gentlemen), the lonely and desolate 
widow dried her tears, furnished her first floor, caught her 
innocent boy to her maternal bosom, and put the bill up in 
her parlor window. Did it remain there long ? No. The 
serpent was on the watch, the train was laid, the mine was 
preparing, the sapper and miner was at work. Before the 
bill had been in the parlor window three days — three days, 
gentlemen — a being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all 
the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster, 
knocked at the door of Mrs. Bardell's house. He inquired 
within ; he took the lodgings ; and on the very next day he 
entered into possession of them. This man was Pickwick — 
Pickwick, the defendant. 

Of this man Pickwick I will say little ; the subject presents 
but few attractions ; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor 
are you, gentlemen, the men to delight in the contemplation 
of revolting heartlessness and systematic villany. I say sys- 
tematic villany, gentlemen, and when I say systematic vil- 
lany, let me tell the defendant, Pickwick, if he be in court 
as I am informed he is, that it would have been more decent 
in him, more becoming, in better judgment, and in better 
taste, if he had stopped away. Let me tell him, gentlemen, 
that any gestures of dissent or disapprobation in which he 
may indulge in this court will not go down with you ; that 



PLEA IN "BARDELL VS. PICKWICK." 287 

you will know how to value and how to appreciate them ; 
and let me tel] him further, as my lord will tell you, gentle- 
men, that a counsel, in his discharge of his duty to his client, 
is neither to be intimidated, nor bullied, nor put down ; and 
that any attempt to do either the one or the other, or the first 
or the last, wall recoil on the head of the attempter, be he 
plaintiff, or be he defendant, be his name Pickwick, or Noakes, 
or Stoakes, or Stiles, or Brown, or Thompson. 

I shall show you, gentlemen, that for two years Pickwick 
continued to reside constantly, and without interruption or 
intermission, at Mrs. Bardell's house. I shall show you that 
Mrs. Bardell, during the whole of that time, waited on him, 
attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his 
linen for the washerwoman when it w r ent abroad, darned, 
aired, and prepared it for wear when it came home, and, in 
short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence. I shall show 
you that, on many occasions, he gave half-pence, and on some 
occasions even sixpences, to her little boy ; and I shall prove 
to you, by a witness whose testimony it will be impossible for 
my learned friend to weaken or controvert, that on one occa- 
sion he patted the boy on the head, and after inquiring 
w r hether he had won any alley tors or commoneys lately (both 
of which I understand to be species of marbles much prized 
by the youth of this town), made use of this remarkable ex- 
pression — "How would you like to have another father ?" 



LVL— THE SAME— CONTINUED. 

CHARLES DICKENS. 

Two letters have passed between these parties, letters 
which are admitted to be in the handwriting of the defend- 
ant, and which speak volumes indeed. These letters, too, 
bespeak the character of the man. They are not open, fer- 
vid, eloquent epistles, breathing nothing but the language of 
affectionate attachment. They are covert, sly, underhanded 
communications, but, fortunately, far more conclusive than if 
couched in the most glowing language and the most poetic 
imagery — letters that must be viewed with a cautious and 
suspicious eye — letters that were evidently intended at the 
time, by Pickwick, to mislead and delude any third parties 



288 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

into whose hands they might fall. Let me read the first : — ■ 
14 Garraway's, twelve o'clock. — Dear Mrs. B. — Chops and 
Tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick." Gentlemen, what does 
this mean ? Chops and Tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick ! 
Chops! Gracious heavens ! and Tomato sauce! Gentlemen, 
is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be 
trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these ? The next 
has no date whatever, which is in itself suspicious — " Dear 
Mrs. B. — I shall not be at home to-morrow. Slow coach." 
And then follows this very remarkable expression — " Don't 
trouble yourself about the warming-pan !" The warming- 
pan ! Why, gentlemen, who doe?, trouble himself about a 
warming-pan ? When was the peace of mind of man or 
woman broken or disturbed about a warming-pan, which is 
in itself a harmless, a useful, and I will add, gentlemen, a 
comforting article of domestic furniture ? Why is Mrs. 
Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about 
this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a 
mere cover for hidden fire — a mere substitute for some en- 
dearing word or promise, agreeable to some preconcerted sys- 
tem of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with 
a view to his contemplated desertion, and which I am not in 
a condition to explain ? And what does this allusion to the 
slow coach mean ? For aught I know, it may be a reference 
to Pickwick himself, who has most unquestionably been a 
criminally slow coach during the whole of this transaction, 
but whose speed will now be very unexpectedly accelerated, 
and whose wheels, gentlemen, as he will find to his cost, will 
very soon be greased by you ! 

But enough of this, gentlemen, it is difficult to smile with 
an aching heart ; it is ill jesting when our deepest sympathies 
are awakened. My client's hopes and prospects are ruined, 
and it is no figure of speech to say that her occupation is gone 
indeed. The bill is down — but there is no tenant. Eligible 
single gentlemen pass and repass — but there is no invitation 
for them to inquire within, or without. All is gloom and 
silence in the house ; even the voice of the child is hushed ; 
his infant sports are disregarded when his mother weeps ; his 
" alley tors" and his " commoneys" are alike neglected ; he 
forgets the long familiar cry of " knuckle down," and at tip- 
chesse, or odd and even, his hand is out. But Pickwick, 
gentlemen, Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this domestic 
oasis in Goswell-street —Pickwick, who has choked up the 



DEATH OF FOX. 



289 



well, and thrown ashes on the sward — Pickwick, who comes 
before yon to-day with his heartless tomato sauce and warm- 
ing-pans — Pickwick still rears his head with unblushing ef- 
frontery, and gazes without a sigh on the ruin he has made. 
Damages, gentlemen — heavy damages, is the only punish- 
ment with which you can visit him ; the only recompense 
you can award to my client. And for those damages she 
now appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feei- 
ing, a conscientious, a dispassionate, a sympathizing, a con- 
templauve jury of her civilized countrymen. 



LVIL— DEATH OF FOX. 

SHERIDAN. 

Upon that subject which must fill all your minds — upon 
the merits of that illustrious man, I shall, I can say but 
little. There must be some interval between the heavy blow 
that has been struck, and the considerations of its effect, be- 
fore any one, and how many are there of those who have 
revered and loved Mr. Fox as I have done, can speak of his 
death with the feeling, but manly composure which becomes 
the dignified regret it ought to inspire. To you, however, 
gentlemen, it cannot be necessary to describe him — for you 
must have known him well. To say anything to you at this 
moment, in the first hours of your unburdened sorrows, must 
be unnecessary, and almost insulting. His image is still 
present before you — his virtue is in your hearts — his loss is 
your despair ! 

I have seen in one of the morning papers what are stated 
to have been the last words of this great man, — " I die hap- 
py ;" then, turning to the dearest object of his affection, " I 
pity you !" But had another moment been allowed him, and 
had the modesty of his great mind permitted it, well might 
he have expressed his compassion, not for his private friends 
only, but for the world — well might he have said, " I pity 
you ! I pity England ! I pity Europe ! I pity the human 
race !' ; For to mankind at large his death must be a source 
of regret, whose life was employed to promote their benefits. 
He died in the spirit of peace, struggling to extend it to the 
world. Tranquil in his own mind, he cherished to the 

13 



290 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

last, with a parental solicitude, the consoling hope to give 
tranquillity to nations. Let us trust that the stroke of death, 
which has borne him from us, may not have left peace, and 
the dignified charities of human nature, as it were, orphans 
upon the world. 



LVIIL-— ON THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 

MILTON. 

Now, sir, for the love of holy reformation, what can be said 
more against these importunate clients of antiquity, than she 
herself hath said ? Whether, think ye, would she approve ; 
still to doat upon immeasurable, innumerable, and therefore 
unnecessary and unmerciful volumes, choosing rather to err 
with the specious name of the fathers ; or, to take a sound truth 
at the hand of a plain upright man, that all his days hath been 
diligently reading the holy scriptures, and thereto imploring 
God's grace, while the admirers of antiquity have been beating 
their brains about their ambones, their dyptichs, and meniais ? 
Now, he that cannot tell of stations and indictions, nor has 
wasted his precious hours in the endless conferring of councils 
and conclaves that demolished one another ; although I know 
many of those that pretend to be great rabbies in these 
studies, have scarce saluted them from the strings and title- 
page, or, to give them more, have been but the ferrets and 
mousehunts of an index ; yet what pastor or minister, how 
learned, religious, or discreet soever, does not now bring both 
his cheeks full blown with oecumenical and sy nodical, shall 
be counted a lank, shallow, insufficient man, yea, a dunce, 
and not worthy to speak about reformation of church dis- 
cipline. But I trust they for whom God hath reserved the 
honor of reforming this Church, will easily perceive their 
adversaries' drift in thus calling for antiquity. They fear the 
plain field of the Scriptures ; the chase is too hot ; they seek 
the dark, the bushy, the tangled forest ; they would imbush , 
they would plunge, and tumble, and think to lie hid in the 
foul weeds and muddy waters, where no plummet can reach 
the bottom. But let them beat themselves like whales, and 
spend their oil till they be dragged ashore. Though where- 
fore should the ministers give them so much line for shifts 
and delays ? Wherefore should they not urge only the gos- 



ATTACK ON ANTWERP. 291 

pel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of diamond, 
till it dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs ? maintaining it 
the honor of its absolute sufficiency and supremacy inviolable ; 
for if the Scripture be ibr reformation, and antiquity to boot, 
it is but an advantage to the dozen, it is no winning cast ; 
and though antiquity be against it, while the Scriptures be for 
it, the cause is as good as ought to be wished, antiquity itself 
sitting judge. 



LIX.— ATTACK ON ANTWERP. 



What did the military opinions amount to ? Precisely 
nothing ; and how could it be otherwise, seeing that the 
officers had no data whereon to found their opinions ? Min- 
isters, indeed, tell us that they had information from their 
spies, that there were so many men at Antwerp — so many at 
Lillo — and so many at Bergen-op-Zoom ; but it must be rec- 
ollected that it is the interest of spies to smooth the diffi- 
culties that lie in the way of their employers : and, inde- 
pendently of this consideration, how is it possible for spies to 
form an estimate of the amount of the small detachments 
which are scattered all over the country? It must also be 
recollected that a great part of the population of the country 
consists of men who have been accustomed to the use of 
arms ; aye, sir, and who have seen fire too. The very sweep- 
ings of such a country would have been sufficient for the 
defence of Antwerp. But were ministers so very ignorant, as 
not to know that there are between twenty and thirty fortified 
towns, within a few days' march of Antwerp, and that each 
of these towns has its garrison ? Nay, it is now known, 
that troops were sent even from Paris to Antwerp, before our 
devoted army reached the point where its difficulties were to 
commence. Did ministers think that troops of the enemy 
were immovable ? The insane calculations of these dream- 
ers remind me of a countryman, who, in directing a travel- 
ler across the Downs, told him, that he must travel three or 
four miles, and when he came to a flock of sheep he must 
turn to the right. But how if the sheep had changed their 
position before he got there ? What would gentlemen say 
of Bonaparte, if, on receiving intelligence from his spies that 



292 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

there were only seven or eight thousand troops near Ports- 
mouth, he was to send an expedition of forty thousand men to 
take the place ? would they not say that he was insane ? 

The noble lord, however, says, that it was intended to take 
Antwerp by a coup-de-main. What must the enemy, sir, 
think of us, when they hear this stated ? with what con- 
tempt and ridicule must they not treat us when they learn 
that the projector of this mighty expedition is acquainted 
with the terms of military science, without having the slight- 
est idea of the meaning of these terms? Good God, sir, talk 
of coit/p-de-main with forty thousand men, and thirty-three 
sail of the line ! Gentlemen might as well talk of coup~de- 
•main in the Court of Chancery. 



LX.-WHAT IS THE FRENCH REVOLUTION? 

LAMARTINE. 

What, then, is the French Revolution ? Is it, as the 
adorers of the past say, a great sedition of a nation disturbed 
ibr no reason, and destroying in their insensate convulsions, 
their church, the'.r monarchy, their classes, their institutions, 
their nationality, and even rending the map of Europe ? No ! 
the Revolution has not been a miserable sedition of France ; 
for a sedition subsides as it rises, and leaves nothing but 
corpses and ruins behind it. The Revolution has left scaf- 
folds and ruins, it is true ; therein is its remorse ; but it has 
also left a doctrine ; it has left a spirit which will be enduring 
and perpetual so long as human reason shall exist. 

We are not inspired by the spirit of faction ! No factious 
idea enters our thoughts. We do not wish to compose a 
faction — we compose opinion, for it is nobler, stronger, and 
more invincible. Shall we have, in our first struggles, 
violence, oppression and death ? No, gentlemen ! let us give 
thanks to our fathers — it shall be liberty which they have 
bequeathed to us, liberty which now has its own arms, its 
pacific arms, to develop itself without anger and excess. 
Therefore shall we triumph — be sure of it ! and if you ask 
what is the moral force that shall bend the government 
beneath the will of the nation, I will answer you ; it is the 
sovereignty of ideas, the royalty of mind, the Republic, the 



TRUE USE OF WEALTH. 293 

true Republic of intelligence, in one word — opinion — that 
modern power whose very name was unknown to antiquity 
Gentlemen, public opinion was born on the very day when 
Guttenberg, who has been styled the artificer of a new 
world, invented, by printing, the multiplication and indefinite 
communication of thought and human reason. This incom- 
prehensible power of opinion needs not for its sway either 
the brand of vengeance, the sword of justice, or the scaffold 
of terror. It holds in its hands the equilibrium between 
ideas and institutions, the balance of the human mind. In 
one of the scales of this balance — understand it well — will be 
for a long time placed, mental superstitions, prejudices self- 
styled useful, the divine right of kings, distinctions of right 
among classes, international animosities, the spirit of conquest, 
the venal alliance of church and state, the censorship of thought, 
the silence of tribunes, and the ignorance and systematic deg- 
radation of the masses. In the other scale, we ourselves, 
gentlemen, will place the lightest and most impalpable thing 
of all that God has created — light, a little of that light which 
the French Revolution evoked at the close of the last century, 
from a volcano, doubtless, but from a volcano of truth. 



LXI.— TRUE USE OF WEALTH. 



Gentlemen, within two hours' journey from Glasgow are 
to be found combined, 

" Whate'er Lorrain hath touched with softening hue, 
Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew." 

The wealth is hee, the enterprise is here, the materials are 
here ; nothing is wanting but the hand of genius to cast these 
precious elements into the mould of beauty — the lofty spirit, 
the high aspirations which, aiming at greatness, never fail to 
attain it. Are we to be told that we cannot do these things ; 
that, like the Russians, we can imitate but cannot conceive ? 
It is not in the nation of Smith and of Watt, — it is not in 
the land of Burns and Scott, — it is not in the country of 
Shakspeare and Milton, — it is not in the empire of Reynolds 
and Wren, that we can give any weight to that argument. 



294 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Nor is it easy to believe that the same genius which hag 
drawn in enchanting colors the lights and shadows of Scot- 
tish life, might not, if otherwise directed, have depicted, with 
equal felicity, the lights and shadows of Scottish scenery. 

But we are not only moral and intellectual, we are active 
agents. We long after gratification — we thirst for enjoy- 
ment ; and the experienced observer of man will not despise 
the subsidiary, but still important aid to be derived in the 
great work of moral elevation, from a due direction of the 
active propensities. And he is not the least friend to his 
species, who, in an age peculiarly vehement in desire, discov- 
ers gratifications which do not corrupt — enjoyments which 
do not degrade. But if this is true of enjoyments simply in- 
nocent, what shall we say of those which refine, which not 
only do not lead to vice, but exalt to virtue ? — which open to 
the peasant, equally with the prince, that pure gratification 
which arises to all alike from the contemplation of the grand 
and beautiful in Art and Nature ? We have now reached 
the point where such an election can no longer be delayed. 
Our wealth is so great, it has come on us so suddenly, it will 
corrupt if it does not refine ; if not directed to the arts which 
raised Athens to immortality, it will sink us to those which 
hurled Babylon to perdition. 



LXTL— YIELDING TO PUBLIC OPINION. 

ALISON. 

It is always in resisting, never by yielding to public opin- 
ion, that these great master-spirits exert their power. The 
conqueror, indeed, who is to act by the present arms of men ; 
the statesman who is to sway by present measures the agi- 
tated masses of society, have need of general support. Napo- 
leon said truly that he was so long successful, because he al- 
ways marched with the opinions of five millions of men. 
But the great intellects which are destined to give a perma- 
nent change to thought — which are destined to act generally, 
not upon the present but the next generation — are almost in- 
variably in direct opposition to general opinion. In truth, it 
is the resistance of a powerful mind to the flood of error by 
which it is surrounded, which, like the compression that 



DECLINE OF THE CELTIC RACE. 295 

elicits the power of steam, creates the moving power which 
alters the moral destiny of mankind. 

Was it by yielding to public opinion that Bacon emanci- 
pated mankind from the fetters of the Aristotelian philoso- 
phy ? Was it by yielding to the Ptolemaic cycles that Co- 
pernicus unfolded the true mechanism of the heavens ? Was 
it by yielding to the dogmas of the Church that Galileo estab- 
lished the earth's motions ? Was it by yielding to the Ro- 
mish corruptions that Luther established the Reformation ? 
Was it by concession that Latimer and Ridley " lighted a 
flame which, by the grace of God, shall never be extin- 
guished?" Was it by conceding to the long-established 
system of commercial restriction, that Smith unfolded the 
truths of the wealth of nations ? — or by chiming in with the 
deluge of infidelity and democracy, with which he was sur- 
rounded, that Burke arrested the devastation of the French 
Revolution ? What were the eloquence of Pitt, the arms of 
Nelson and Wellington, but the ministers of those principles 
which, in opposition to general opinion, he struck out at once, 
and with a giant's arm ? " Genius creates by a single con- 
ception ; in a single principle, opening, as it were, on a sud- 
den to genius, a great and new system of things is discovered. 
The statuary conceives a statue at once, which is afterwards 
slowly executed by the hands of many." 



LXILL— DECLINE OF THE CELTIC RACE. 

MICHELET. 

Ireland ! Poor first-born of the Celtic race ! So far from 
France, yet its sister, whom it cannot succor across the waves ! 
The Isle of Saints — the Emerald Isle — so fruitful in men, so 
bright in genius ! — the country of Berkeley and Toland, of 
Moore and O'Connell !— the land of bright thoughts and the 
rapid sword, which preserves, amidst the old age of this 
world, its poetic inspiration. Let the English smile when, 
passing some hovel in their towns, they hear the Irish widow 
chant the coronach for her husband. Weep ! mournful 
country ; and let France too w r eep, for degradation which she 
cannot prevent — calamities which she cannot avert ! In 
vain have four hundred thousand Irishmen perished in the 



296 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

service of France. The Scotch Highlanders will ere long 
disappear from the face of the earth ; the mountains are daily- 
depopulating ; the great estates have ruined the land of the 
Gaul as they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will ere 
long exist only in the romances of Walter Scott. The tar- 
tan and the claymore excite surprise in the streets of Edin- 
burgh ; they disappear — they emigrate ; their national airs 
will ere long be lost, as the music of the Eolian harp when 
the winds are hushed. 

Behind the Celtic world, the old red granite of the Euro- 
pean tbrmation has arisen — a new world, with different pas- 
sions, desires, and destinies. Last of the savage races which 
overflowed Europe, the Germans were the first to introduce 
the spirit of independence ; the thirst for individual freedom. 
That bold and youthful spirit — that youth of man, who feels 
himself strong and free in a world which he appropriates to 
himself in anticipation — in forests of which he knows not the 
bounds — on a sea which wafts him to unknown shores — that 
spring of the unbroken horse which bears him to the Steppes 
and the Pampas — all worked in Alaric, when he swore that 
an unknown force impelled him to the gates of Rome ; they 
impelled the Danish pirate when he rode on the stormy bil- 
low ; they animated the Saxon outlaws when under Robin 
Hood they contended for the laws of Edward the Confessor 
against the Norman barons. That spirit of personal freedom, 
of unbounded personal pride, shines in all their writings, it is 
the invariable characteristic of the German theology and phi- 
losophy. From the day when, according to the beautiful 
German fable, the ' Wargus' scattered the dust on all his re- 
lations, and threw the grass over his shoulder, and resting on 
his staff, overleapt the frail paternal enclosure, and let his 
plume float to the wind — from that moment he aspired to 
the empire of the world. He deliberated with Attila wheth- 
er he should overthrow the empire of the east or the west ; 
he aspired with England to overspread the western and 
southern hemispheres. 



DISREGARD OF THE PAST. 297 

LXIV.— DISREGARD OF THE PAST. 

TALFOURD. 

I have observed, with sorrow, a prevailing disregard of 
the past, and a desire to extol the present, or to expatiate in 
visionary prospects of the future. I fear this may be traced 
not so much to philanthropy as to self-love, which inspires 
men with the w r ish personally to distinguish themselves as the 
teachers and benefactors of their species, instead of resting 
contented to share in the vast stock of recollections and 
sympathies which is common to all. They would fain per- 
suade us that mankind, created " a little lower than the 
angels," is now for the first time " crowned with glory and 
honor;" and they exultingly point to institutions of yesterday 
for the means to regenerate the earth. Some, for example, 
pronounce the great mass of the people, through all ages, as 
scarcely elevated above the brutes which perish, because the 
arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic were not commonly 
diffused among them ; and on the diffusion of these they 
ground their predictions of a golden age. And were there 
then no virtuous hardihoed, no guileless innocence, no affec- 
tions stronger than the grave, in that mighty lapse of years 
which we contemptuously stigmatize as dark ? Are disinter- 
ested patriotism, conjugal love, open-handed hospitality, meek 
self-sacrifice, and chivalrous contempt of danger and of death, 
modern inventions ? Has man's great birthright been in 
abeyance even until now ? Oh, no ! The Chaldsean shepherd 
did not cast his quiet gaze through weeks and years in vain 
to the silent skies. He knew not, indeed, the discoveries of 
science, which have substituted an immense variety of 
figures on space and distance, for the sweet influences of the 
stars ; yet did the heavens tell to him the glory of God, and 
angel faces smile on him from the golden clouds. Book- 
learning is, perhaps, the least part of the education of the 
species. Nature is the mightiest and the kindliest of teachers. 
The rocks and unchanging hills give to the heart the sense of 
a duration beyond that of the perishable body. The flowing 
stream images to the soul an everlasting continuity of tranquil 
existence. " The brave o'er-hanging firmament," even to 
the most rugged swain, imparts some consciousness of the 
universal brotherhood of those over whom it hangs. 
13* 



298 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



LXV.— ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 

TALFOURD. 

The liberality of genius is surely ill urged as an excuse 
for our ungrateful denial of its rights. The late Mr. Cole- 
ridge gave an example not merely of its liberality, but of its 
profuseness ; while he sought not even to appropriate to his 
fame the vast intellectual treasures which he had derived 
from boundless research, aud colored by a glorious imagina- 
tion ; while he scattered abroad the seeds of beauty and of 
wisdom to take root in congenial minds, aud was content to 
witness their fruits in the productions of those who heard 
him. But ought we, therefore, the less to deplore, now when 
the music of his divine philosophy is forever hushed, that the 
earlier portion of those works on which he stamped his own 
impress — all which he desired of the world that it should rec- 
ognize as his — is published for the gain of other than his 
children — that his death is illustrated by the forfeiture of 
their birthright ? What justice is there in this? Do we re- 
ward our heroes thus ? Did we tell our Marlborough's, our 
Nelson's, our Wellington's, that glory was their reward, that 
they fought for posterity, and that posterity would pay them ? 
We leave them to no such cold and uncertain requital ; we 
do not even leave them merely to enjoy the spoils of their 
victories, which we deny to the author ; we concentrate a 
nation's honest feeling of gratitude and pride into the form 
of an endowment, and teach other ages what we thought, 
and what they ought to think, of their deeds, by the sub- 
stantial memorials of our praise. Were our Shakspeare and 
Milton less the ornaments of their country, less the benefac- 
tors of mankind ? Would the example be less inspiring, if 
we permitted them to enjoy the spoils of their peaceful vic- 
tories — if we allowed to their descendants, not the tax as- 
sessed by present gratitude and charged on the Future, but 
the mere amount which that future would be delighted to 
pay — extending as the circle of their glory expands, and ren- 
dered only by those who individually reap the benefits, aud 
are contented at once to enjoy and reward its author ? But 
I do not press these considerations to the full extent : the 
Past is beyond our power, and I only ask for the present a 
brief reversion in the Future. 



TRUE POSITION OF NAPOLEON. 299 

LXTL— HAMLET'S ADDRESS TO THE PLAYERS. 

SHAKSPEARE. 

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, 
trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of 
our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. 
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but 
use all gently : for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I 
may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and 
beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. 0, it 
offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated 
fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears 
of the groundlings ; who, for the most part, are capable of 
nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise : I would 
have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant ; it 
out-herods Herod : Pray you, avoid it. 

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your 
tutor ; suit the action to the word, the word to the action ; 
with this special observance, that you o'er-step not the 
modesty of nature : for anything so overdone is from the pur- 
pose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, 
and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show 
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very 
age and the body of the time, his form and pressure. Now 
this, overdone, or come tardy off', though it make the unskil- 
ful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve ; the censure 
of which one, must, in your allowance, o'er- weigh a whole 
theatre of others. 0, there be players, that I have seen 
play, — and heard others praise, aud that highly, — not to 
speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Chris- 
tians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strut- 
ted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's 
journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they 
imitated humanity so abominably. 



LXVIL— TRUE POSITION 1 " OF NAPOLEON. 

CORMENIN. 

But let us try to see Napoleon as he will be seen by the 
sages of posterity. 

He has reigned as reign all the powers of this world, by the 



300 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

force of his principle. He has fallen as fall all the powers 
of this world, by violence and the abuse of that principle. 
Greater than Alexander, than Charlemagne, than Peter, and 
than Frederick, he has, like them, impressed his name upon 
his age. Like them, he was a lawgiver. Like them, he 
founded an empire. His universal memory lives beneath the 
tents of the Arab, and traverses with the canoes of the sav- 
age, the distant rivers of the Oceanic Islands. The people 
of France, so ready to forget, of a revolution which has over- 
turned the world have retained but his name. The soldiers 
in their bivouac talk of no other captain, and when they 
pass through the cities their eyes rest upon no other image. 

When the people accomplished the Revolution of July, 
the banner, all trampled in the dust, which was raised anew 
by the soldier working-men, extempore chiefs of the insurrec- 
tion — this banner was the banner surmounted by the French 
eagle ; it was the banner of Austerlitz, of Jena, and of 
Wagram, rather than that of Jemappes and of Fleurus ; it 
was the banner which was planted on the towers of Lisbon, 
of Vienna, of Berlin, of Rome, of Moscow, rather than that 
which floated above the federac-y of the Champ-de-Mars ; it 
was the banner which had been riddled with balls at Water- 
loo ; it was the banner which the emperor held embraced at 
Fontainebleau while bidding farewell to his old guard ; it 
was the banner which shaded at St. Helena the face of the 
expiring hero ; it was, in one word, to say all, the banner of 
Napoleon ! 

But stop, for on the other hand I hear muttering a severer 
voice, and fear that history, in her turn, prepares her indict- 
ment against him, and 

" He dethroned the sovereignty of the people. He was 
Emperor of the French Republic, and he became despot. 
He threw the weight of his sword into the scales of the law. 
He incarcerated individual liberty in the state prisons. He 
stifled the freedom of the press under the gag of the censor- 
ship. He violated the trial by jury. He held in abasement 
and servitude the Courts, the Legislative Body, and the Sen- 
ate. He depopulated the fields and the workshops. He 
grafted upon militarism a new nobility, which could not fail 
to become more insupportable than the ancient, because 
without the same antiquity, or the same prestiges. He levied 
arbitrary taxes. He meant there should be throughout the 
whole empire but one voice, his voice, but one law, his will 



QUALIFICATIONS FOR SOLDIERS. 301 

Our capitols, our cities, our armies, our fleets, our palaces, 
our museums, our magistrates, our citizens; became his capi- 
tols, his towns, his armies, his fleets, his palaces, his museums, 
his magistrates, and his subjects. He drew after him the 
nation over the battle-fields of Europe, where we have left 
no other remembrance than the insolence of our victories, our 
carcasses, and our gold. In fine, after having besieged the 
forts of Cadiz, after having held the keys of Lisbon, and of 
Madrid, of Vienna and of Berlin, of Naples and of Rome ; 
after having shaken the very pavements of Moscow beneath 
the thunder of his cannonading, he has rendered France less 
great than he found her — all bleeding of her wounds, dis- 
mantled, exposed, impoverished, and humbled.'* 



LXVIIL— QUALIFICATIONS FOR SOLDIERS. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

You say these men interpret the Scriptures in an orthodox 
manner ; and that they eat their God. Very likely. All 
this may seem very important to you, who live fourteen miles 
from a market- town, and, from long residence upon your liv- 
ing, are become a kind of holy vegetable ; and, in a theologi- 
cal sense, it is highly important. But I want soldiers and 
sailors for the state ; I want to make a greater use than I 
now can do of a poor country full of men ; I want to render 
the military service popular among the Irish ; to check the 
power of France ; to make every possible exertion for the 
safety of Europe, which in twenty years' time, will be noth- 
ing but a mass of French slaves ; and then you, and ten thou- 
sand other such boobies as you, call out — " For God's sake, 
do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland ! . . . . 
They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner 
from what we do ! . . . . They eat a bit of wafer every Sun- 
day, which they call their God !".... I wish to my soul 
they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are. What ! 
when Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are 
all combined against this country ; when men of every reli- 
gious persuasion, and no religious persuasion , when the popu- 
lation of half the globe is up in arms against us ; are we to 
stand examining our generals and armies as a bishop exam- 



302 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

ines a candidate for holy orders ? and to suffer no one to bleed 
for England who does not agree with you about the 2d of 
Timothy ? You talk about the Catholics ! If you and your 
brotherhood have been able to persuade the country into a 
continuation of this grossest of all absurdities, you have ten 
times the power which the Catholic clergy ever had in their 
best days. Louis XIV., when he revoked the Edict of 
Nantes, never thought of preventing the Protestants from 
fighting his battles ; and gained accordingly some of his most 
splendid victories by the talents of his Protestant generals. 
No power in Europe, but yourselves, has ever thought, ibr 
these hundred years past, of asking whether a bayonet is 
Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran ; but whether it is 
sharp and well-tempered. A bigot delights in public ridicule ; 
ibr he begins to think he is a martyr. I cau promise you the 
full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one extremity of Europe 
to the other. 



LXIX.— GRIEVANCES OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT. 

MACKINTOSH. 

We are boldly challenged to produce our proofs ; our com- 
plaints are asserted, to be chimerical ; and the excellence of 
our government is inferred from its beneficial effects. Most 
unfortunately for us — most unfortunately for our country, 
these proofs are too ready and too numerous. We find 
them in that " monumental debt," the bequest of wasteful 
and profligate wars, which already wrings from the peasant 
something of his hard-earned pittance, — which already has 
punished the industry of the useful and upright manufacturer, 
by robbing him of the asylum of his house, and the judgment 
of his peers, — to which the madness of political Quixotism 
adds a million for every farthing that the pomp of ministerial 
empiricism pays, — and which menaces our children with con- 
vulsions and calamities, of which no age has seen the paral- 
lel. We find them in the black and bloody roll of persecut- 
ing statutes that are still suffered to stain our code ; — a list so 
execrable, that were no monument to be preserved of what 
England was in the eighteenth century but her Statute 
Book, she might be deemed to have been then still plunged 



DUTY OF ENGLAND TO ITALY. 303 

in the deepest gloom of superstitious barbarism. We find 
them in the ignominious exclusion of great bodies of our fel- 
low-citizens from political trusts, by tests which reward false- 
hood and punish probity, — which profane the rights of the 
religion it pretends to guard, and usurp the dominion of the 
God they profess to revere. We find them in the growing 
corruption of those who administer the government, — in the 
venality of the House of Commons, w r hich has become only a 
cumbrous and expensive chamber for registering ministerial 
edicts, — in the increase of a nobility degraded by the profu- 
sion and prostitution of honors, which the most zealous parti- 
sans of democracy w T ould have spared them. We find them, 
above all, in the rapid progress which has been made in silencing 
the great organ of public opinion, — -that Press, which is the true 
control over the ministers and parliaments, who might else, 
with impunity, trample on the impotent formalities that form 
the pretended bulwark of our freedom. The mutual con- 
trol, the well-poised balance of the several members of our 
Legislature, are the visions of theoretical, or the pretext of 
practical politicians. It is a government, not of check, but 
of conspiracy, — a conspiracy which can only be repressed by 
the energy of popular opinion. 



LXX— DUTY OF ENGLAND TO ITALY. 

MACKINTOSH. 

Italy is, perhaps, of all civilized countries, that which 
affords the most signal example of the debasing power of 
provincial dependence, and cf a foreign yoke. With inde- 
pendence, and with national spirit, they have lost, if not 
talent, at least the moral and dignified use of talent, which 
constitutes its only worth. Italy alone seemed to derive some 
hope of independence from the convulsions which had de- 
stroyed that of other nations. The restoration of Europe 
annihilated the hopes of Italy : — the emancipation of other 
countries announced her bondage. Stern necessity compelled 
us to suffer the re-establishment of foreign masters in a 
greater part of that renowned and humiliated country. But 
as to Genoa, our hands were unfettered ; we were at liberty 
to be just, or if you will, to be generous We had in oui- 



304 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

hands the destiny of the last of that great body of Republics 
which united the ancient and the modern world, — the chil- 
dren and heirs of Roman civilization, who spread commerce, 
and with it refinement, liberty, and humanity over Western 
Europe, and whose history has lately been rescued from ob- 
livion, and disclosed to our times, by the greatest of living 
historians. I hope I shall not be thought fanciful when I 
gay that Genoa, whose greatness was r ounded on naval pow- 
er, and which, in the earliest ages, gave the almost solitary 
example of a commercial gentry, — Genoa, the remnant of 
Italian liberty, and the only remaining hope of Italian inde- 
pendence, had peculiar claims — to say no more — on the 
' generosity of the British nation. How have these claims 
been satisfied ? She has been sacrificed to a frivolous, a 
doubtful, perhaps an imaginary, speculation of convenience. 
The most odious of foreign yokes has been imposed upon her 
by a free state, — by a people whom she never injured, — after 
she had been mocked by the re-appearance of her ancient 
government, and by all the ensigns and badges of her past 
glory. And after all this, she has been told to be grateful 
for the interest which the government of England has taken 
m her fate. By this confiscation of the only Italian territory 
which was at the disposal of justice, the doors of hope have 
been barred on Italy forever. No English general can ever 
again deceive Italians. 



LXXL— DEFENCE OF THE POET ARCHIAS. 

CICERO. 

Had I not been convinced from my youth, by much in- 
struction and much study, that nothing is greatly desirable in 
life but glory and virtue, and that, in the pursuit of these, 
all bodily tortures, and the perils of death and exile, are to be 
slighted and despised, never should I have exposed myself to 
so many and so great conflicts for your preservation, nor to 
the daily rage and violence of the most worthless of men. 
But on this head books are full, the voice of the wise is full, 
antiquity is full ; all which, were it not for the lamp of learn- 
ing, would be involved in thick obscurity. How many pic- 
tures of the bravest of men have the Greek and Latin 



DEFENCE OF THE POET ARCHIAS. 30c 

writers left us, not only to contemplate, but likewise to imi 
tate ! But were pleasure only to be derived from learning, 
without the advantages we have mentioned, you must still, I 
imagine, allow it to be a very liberal and polite amusement ; 
for other studies are not suited to every time, to every aoe, 
and to every place ; but these give strength in youth and joy 
in old age ; adorn prosperity, and are the support and conso- 
lation of adversity ; at home they are delightful, and abroad 
they are easy ; at night they are company to us ; when we 
travel they attend us : and, in our rural retirements, they do 
not forsake us. Though we ourselves were incapable of them, 
and had no relish for their charms, still we should admire 
them when we see them in others. 

How often have I seen this Archias, my lords, without 
using his pen, and without any labor or study, make a great 
number of excellent verses on occasional subjects. How 
often, when a subject was resumed, have I heard him give it 
a different turn of thought and expression : while those com- 
positions which he finished with care and exactness were as 
highly approved as the most celebrated writings of antiquity. 
And shall I not love this man ? Shall I not admire him ? 
Shall I not defend him to the utmost of my power ? For 
men of the greatest eminence and learning have taught us 
that other branches of science require education, art, and 
precept ; but that the poet is formed by the plastic hand of 
nature herself is quickened by the native fire of genius, and 
animated, as it were, by a kind of divine enthusiasm. It is 
with justice therefore that our Ennius bestows on poets the 
epithet of ' k venerable," because they seem to have some 
peculiar gifts of the gods to recommend them to us. Let the 
name of poet, then, which the most barbarous nations have 
never profaned, be revered by you, my lords, who are so great 
admirers of polite learning. Rocks and deserts re-echo 
sounds ; savage beasts are often softened by music, and listen 
to its charms : and shall we, with all the advantages of the 
best education, be unaffected with the voice of poetry ? The 
praises of our fleet shall ever be recorded and celebrated for 
the wonders performed at Tenedos, where the enemy's ships 
were sunk, and their commanders s-lain : such are our trophies, 
such our monuments, such our triumphs. Those, therefore, 
whose genius describes these exploits, celebrate likewise the 
praises of the Roman name. 

We beg of you, therefore, my lords, since in matters of 



306 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

such importance not only the intercession of men but of gods 
is necessary, that the man who has always celebrated your 
virtues, those of your generals, and the victories of the Roman 
people ; who declares that he will raise eternal monuments to 
your praise and mine for our conduct in our late domestic 
dangers ; and who is of the number of those who have ever 
been accounted and pronounced divine, may be so protected 
by you as to have greater reason to applaud your generosity 
than to complain of your rigor. 



LXXIL— SPEECH OF SHREWSBURY BEFORE QUEEN 
ELIZABETH. 



God whose wondrous hand has four times protected you, 
and who to-day gave the feeble arm of gray hairs strength to 
turn aside the stroke of a madman, should inspire confidence. 
I will not now speak in the name of justice : this is not the 
time. In such a tumult, you cannot hear her still small 
voice. Consider this only ; you are fearful now of the living 
Mary ; but I say it is not the living you have to fear. 
Tremble at the dead — the beheaded. She will rise from the 
grave a fiend of dissension. She will awaken the spirit of 
revenge in your kingdom, and wean the hearts of your sub- 
jects from you. At present she is an object of dread to the 
British ; but when she is no more, they will revenge her. 
No longer will she then be regarded as the enemy of their 
faith ; her mournful fate will cause her to appear as the 
granddaughter of their king, the victim of man's hatred, and 
woman's jealousy. Soon will you see the change appear ! 
Drive through London after the bloody deed has been done ; 
show yourself to the people, who now surround you with 
joyful acclamations : then will you see another England, 
another people ! No longer will you then walk forth en- 
circled by the radiance of heavenly justice which now binds 
every heart to you. Dread the frightful name of tyrant 
which will precede you through shuddering hearts, and re- 
sound through every street where you pass. You have done 
the last irrevocable deed. What head stands fast when this 
sacred one has fallen ? 



MR. FOX AND THE EAST IXDIA BILL. DOT 



LXXIII.— MR. FOX AND THE EAST INDIA BILL. 

BURKE. 

The author of the East India Bill, Mr. Fox, has put to 
hazard his ease, his security, his interest, his power, even his 
darling popularity, for the benefit of a people whom he has 
never seen. This is the road that all heroes have trod be- 
fore him. He is traduced and abused for his supposed mo- 
tives. He will remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingre- 
dient in the composition of all true glory : he will remember, 
that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the 
nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse 
are essential parts of triumph. These thoughts will support 
a mind, which only exists for honor, under the burthen of 
temporary reproach. He is doing indeed a great good ; such 
as rarely falls to the lot, and almost as rarely coincides with 
the desires of any man. Let him use his time. Let him 
give the whole length of the reins to his benevolence. He is 
now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are 
turned to him. He may live long, he may do much. But 
here is the summit. He can never exceed what he does this 
day. 

I confess, I anticipate with joy the reward of those, whose 
whole consequence, power, and authority, exist only for the 
benefit of mankind ; and I carry my mind to all the people, 
and all the names and descriptions, that, relieved by this bill, 
will bless the labors of this parliament, and the confidence 
w T hich the best House of Commons has given to him who the 
best deserves it. The little cavils of party will not be heard, 
where freedom and happiness will be felt. There is not a 
tongue, a nation, or a religion in India, which will not bless 
the presiding care and manly beneficence of this House, and 
of him who proposes to you this great work. Your names 
will never be separated before the throne of the Divine 
Goodness, in whatever language, or with whatever rites, par- 
don is asked for sin, and reward for those w T ho imitate the 
Godhead in his universal bounty to his creatures. These 
honors you deserve, and they will surely be paid, when all 
the jargon of influence, and party, and patronage, are swept 
into oblivion 



308 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



LXXIV.— DETACHED EMPIRE. 

BURKE. 

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is 
hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, 
hut laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three 
thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No con- 
trivance can prevent the effect of this distance, in weaken- 
ing- government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the 
order and the execution ; and the want of a speedy explana- 
tion of a single point, is enough to defeat a whole system. 
You have, indeed, winged messengers of vengeance, who 
carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the 
sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance 
of raging passions and furious elements, and says, " So far 
shalt thou go and no farther." Who are you that should 
fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature ? Nothing 
worse happens to you than does to all nations, who have ex- 
tensive empire ; and it happens into all the forms into which 
empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of 
power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has 
said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and 
Gurdistan, as he governs Thrace ; nor has he the same do- 
minion in Crimea and Algiers, which he has at Brusa and 
Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. 
The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with 
a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole of the 
force and vigor of his authority in his centre, is derived from 
a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain in her prov- 
inces, is, perhaps, not so well obeyed, as you are in yours. 
She complies, too ; she submits ; she watches times. This is 
the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and 
detached empire. 



LXXV.— TAXATION OF AMERICA. 

BURKE. 

Let us, sir, embrace some system or other before we end 
this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a 
productive revenue from thence ? If you do, speak out ; 



THE RETURN OF PEACE. 309 

name, fix, ascertain this revenue ; settle its quantity ; define 
its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight when 
you have something to fisrht for. If you murder — rob ; if you 
kill, take possession : and do not appear in the character of mad- 
men, as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyran- 
nical, without an object. m But may better counsels guide you ! 
Again, and again, revert to your old principles — seek peace 
and ensue it — leave America, if she has taxable matter in 
her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions 
of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not 
enter into these metaphysical distinctions ; I hate the very 
sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently 
stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, 
will die along with it. They and we, and their and our an- 
cestors, have been happy under that system. Let the mem- 
ory of all actions, in contradiction to that good old mode, 
on both sides, be extinguished forever. Be content to bind 
America by laws of trade ; you have always done it. Let 
this be your reason for binding their trade. Do not burthen 
them with taxes ; you were not used to do so from the begin- 
ning. Let this be your reason for not taxing. These are 
the arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave the rest to the 
schools ; for there only they may be discussed with safety. 
But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and 
poison the very sources of government, by urging subtle de- 
ductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from 
the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, 
you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty 
itself in question. When you drive hirn hard, the boar will 
surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their 
freedom cannot be reconciled, what will they take ? They 
will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued 
into slavery. 



LXXVL— THE RETURN" OF PEACE. 

JEFFREY. 

We are still too near the great image of Deliverance and 
Reform which the Genius of Europe has just set up before 
us, to discern with certainty its just lineaments, or construe 
the true character of the aspect with which it looks onward 



310 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

to futurity ! We see enough, however, to fill us with innu- 
merable feelings, and the germs of many high and anxious 
speculations. 

The first and predominant feeling which rises on contempla- 
ting the scenes that have just burst on our view, is that of deep- 
felt gratitude and delight, — for the liberation of so many op- 
pressed nations, — for the cessation of bloodshed and fear and 
misery over the fairest portions of the civilized world, — and 
for the enchanting, though still dim and uncertain prospect 
of long peace and measureless improvement, which seems at 
last to be opening on the suffering kingdoms of Europe. The 
very novelty of such a state of things, which could be known 
only by description to the greater part of the existing gene- 
ration — the suddenness of its arrival, and the contrast which 
d forms with the anxieties and alarms to which it has so 
irnmed ately succeeded, all concur most powenully to enhance 
its vast intrinsic attractions. It has come upon the world 
like the balmy air and flushing verdure of a late spring, after 
the dreary chills of a long and interminable winter ; and the 
refreshing sweetness with which it has visited the earth, feels 
like Elysium to those who have just escaped from the driv- 
ing tempests it has banished. 

We have reason to hope, too, that the riches of the harvest 
will correspond with the splendor of this early promise. All 
the periods in which human society and human intellect 
have been known to make great and memorable advances, 
have followed close upon periods of general agitation and 
disorder. Men's minds, it would appear, must be deeply and 
roughly stirred, before they become prolific of great concep- 
tions, or vigorous resolves ; and a vast and alarming fermen- 
tation must pervade and agitate the mass of society, to inform 
it with that kindly warmth, by which alone the seeds of 
genius and improvement can be expanded. 



LXXVIL— GLORY OF HOLLAND AND IRELAND. 

BOYTOX. 

The history of the Dutch people dims indeed the lustre, 
while it transcends all that is marvellous in Spartan story. 
Subjects of the most powerful monarch of the day, the lord of 



GLORY OF HOLLAND AND IRELAND. 311 

an eastern and western world, with treasures the most bound- 
less, with armies the best disciplined, trained to war, and 
habituated to victory, and led by generals whose experience 
and skill have been the admiration of after times, they rose 
against their oppressors. Amid the sorest persecution, under 
trials, the mere recital of which would blanch the cheek, 
neither the violence of armed despotism, nor the cruelty of 
bigoted power, could subdue a people determined to be free ; 
deeply impressed with the truths spread abroad at the period 
of the Reformation, when their souls were emancipated, their 
bodies could not be enslaved. In defence of that sacred prin- 
ciple which commands every being to worship his God as his 
conscience dictates, they rose upon their bigoted persecutors 
to a man. The same elastic principle which effected the 
national independence of Holland, spread wide its national 
prosperity — her fleets filled every harbor — her products sup- 
plied every market — the extent of her enterprise was circum- 
scribed only by the limits of the globe — her whalers usurped 
the Arctic regions — her industry drew from the northern 
deeps treasures as abundant, and far more blessed than her 
persecutors could extract, under the lash of tyrants and amid 
the tears of slaves, from the exhaustless caverns of Potosi and 
Peru. The shores of three quarters of the globe were inter- 
spersed with her settlements — her establishments in the East 
were almost as numerous as the islands in the Indian Archi- 
pelago ; and at some future period, when the present state of the 
habitable world shall have passed away, we know the great 
ones of the earth will pass away, and new states arise under 
His bidding, at whose command nations and empires rise 
and fall, flourish and decay. Suppose, when the great ones 
of the earth have sunk into oblivion, and that some phi- 
losopher or historian, or some one dedicated to antiquarian 
research some thousand years hence, shall find the names of 
Holland and Ireland affixed to regions distant from the parent 
country by a semi-circumference of the globe — when he finds 
in the nomenclature of geography a monument of their 
language, he will naturally inquire, what a wondrous country 
must this have been — her population, how numerous — her 
territory, how extensive — her climate, how favorable — her soil, 
how fruitful — and if there be any old almanac in those days, 
and a reference is made to it, how surprised will he be to find 
this countless people to have been less than two millions of souls, 
anl this extensive territory not much larger than an English 



312 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

county ! Perhaps, too, he may question the fidelity of the 
poet, who describes the industry of this surprising people as 
encroaching upon the ocean, and creating a sphere ibr its 
labors by that firm connected bulwark, which 

" Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, 
Scoops out an empire and usurps the shore, 
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile, 
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile ; 
The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale, 
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail; 
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain — 
A new creation rescued from his reign." 



LXXV1IL— APPARITIONS. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Are we not Spirits, shaped into a body, into an Appearance ; 
and that fade away again into air, and Invisibility ? This is 
no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact : we start out of 
Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; round us, as 
round the veriest spectre, is Eternity ; and to Eternity min- 
utes are as years and oeons. Come there not tones of love 
and faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of 
beatified Souls ? And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in 
our discordant screech-owlish debatings and recriminations) ; 
and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; or uproar, and 
revel in our mad Dance of the Dead, — till the scent of the 
morniug-air summons us to our still Home ; and dreamy 
Night becomes awake and Day ? Where now is Alexander 
of Macedon ; does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle 
shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him ; or have 
they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must ? 
Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Cam- 
paigns ? Was it all other than the veriest Spectre Hunt ; 
which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night 
hideous, flitted away ? Ghosts ! There are well nigh a 
thousand million walking the earth openly at noontide ; some 
half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have 
arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 

So has it been from the beginning, and so it will be to the 
end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form 



THE LANDED INTEREST. 313 

of a Body ; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on 
Heaven's mission appears. What Force and Fire is in earth 
he expends ; one grinding in the mill of Industry ; one hunt- 
er-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one 
madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his 
fellow ; — and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly 
Vesture falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a van- 
ished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thunder- 
ing train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious mankind 
thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, 
through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire- 
breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste 
stormf ully across the astonished Earth ; then plunge again 
into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her 
seas filled up, in our passage : can the Earth, which is but 
dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are 
alive ? On the hardest adamant some foot-print of us is 
stamped in ; the last rear of the host will read traces of the 
earliest Van. But whence ? — Heaven, whither ? Sense 
knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through Mystery 
to Mystery, from God and to God. 

" We are such stuff 
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life 
Is rounded with a sleep !" 



LXXIX.— THE LANDED INTEREST. 

d'israeli. 

It is a fact, a well-known fact, that the spirit of the landed 
interest is deeply moved, and whether they have foundation 
for their feelings or not, I would not recommend any minister 
to treat them with contempt. I fear the notion is of old 
standing, that the landed interest maybe treated with impu- 
nity. It was a proverb of Walpole's, that they could be 
fleeced with security ; and I observe that at no time was the 
landed interest treated more unjustly than when demagogues 
were denouncing them as an oligarchical usurpation. But, 
sir. I think this may be a dangerous game, if you be out- 
raging justice. It is true you may trust to their proverbial 
loyalty. Trust to their loyalty, but do not abuse it. I dare 

14 



314 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

say, it may be said of them, as it was said three thousand 
years ago, that the agricultural class is the least given to 
sedition. It is true, I doubt not, that the Englishman, in his 
plains and dales, is in this respect as the Greeks were in their 
islands and continents. You should also remember that the 
ancestors of these men were the founders of your liberty — the 
men who fought and died for justice. You may rely upon it, 
that the spirit which refused to pay ship-money is not to be 
trifled with. Their conduct has exhibited no hostile feeling, 
notwithstanding the political changes that have occurred 
during late years, and the apparent diminution of their power. 
They have inscribed a homely sentiment on their banners ; 
but one, if I mistake not, which touches the heart, and con- 
vinces the minds of Englishmen — " Live and let live." 

You, the leading spirits of the manufacturing interest, have 
openly declared your opinion, that if there was not an acre 
of land cultivated in England, the country would not be in a 
worse condition, and you have joined in open chorus in an- 
nouncing that England would monopolize the trade of all 
countries, and become the workshop of the world. Your 
systems, then, and those of the agricultural body, are directly 
contrary. They invite union ; they believe that national 
prosperity is only produced by the welfare of all. You would 
wish to achieve an isolated splendor ; a solitary magnificence ; 
but, believe me, when I say that, if you succeed in your 
wishes you will be an exception in the history of mankind. 
It will be a departure from the principles which have hitherto 
governed society, if you can maintain that prosperity which 
you desire, without the possession of that permanence and sta- 
bility which territorial influence can alone insure. I see no 
reason, though you may for a moment flourish after their 
destruction, though our ports may be filled with your ship- 
ping, though your factories smoke on every plain, though your 
forges may flame in every city, I see no reason why you 
should form an exception to that which history has recorded. 
I see no reason, why you should not fade with the Syrian, and 
moulder with the Venetian palaces. Rely upon it, you will 
find in the landed interest the best and the surest foundation 
upon which to build enduring prosperity ; you will find in 
that interest, a consoler in your troubles, a champion in your 
dangers, and a counsellor in your adversity. 



VINDICATION FROM DISHON'OR. 315 



LXXX.— VINDICATION FROM DISHONOR. 

EMMET. 

Let no man dare when I am dead to charge me with dis- 
honor ; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I 
could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's 
liberty and independence ; or that I could have become the 
pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of 
my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional gov- 
ernment speaks for our views ; no inference can be tortured 
from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or 
subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad ; I would 
not have submitted to a foreign oppressor ; in the dignity of 
freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my 
country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my 
lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and 
who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and 
watchful oppressor, and the bondage of the grave, only to give 
my countrymen their rights, and my country her inde- 
pendence, and am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suf- 
fered to resent or repel it ? No, God forbid ! 

My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifiice — the blood which 
you seek, is not congealed by the artificial terrors which sur- 
round your victim ; it circulates warmly and unruffled, 
through the channels which God created for noble purposes, 
but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous, 
that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient ! I have but a few 
words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave : 
my lamp of life is nearly extinguished : my race is run : the 
grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom ! I have 
but one request to ask at my departure from this world, — 
it is the charity of its silence ! — Let no man write my epitaph : 
for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate 
them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them 
and me rejoice in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain 
uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice 
to my character ; when my country takes her place among 
the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my 
epitaph be written. I have done. 



316 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



LXXXL— REMOVAL OF THE TROOPS FROM BOSTON. 

CHATHAM. 

When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us 
from America ; when you consider their decency, firmness, 
and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to 
make it your own. For myself, I must declare and avow, 
that in all my reading and observation — I have read Thucy- 
dides, and have studied and admired the master states of the 
world — that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and 
wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult 
circumstances, no nation, or body of men, can stand in pref- 
erence to the General Congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is 
obvious to your lordships, that all attempts to impose servi- 
tude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a 
mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We 
shall be forced ultimately to retract ; let us retract while we 
can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo 
these violent oppressive acts ; they must be repealed — you 
will repeal them ; I stake my reputation on it — I will consent 
to be taken for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed. 
Avoid, then, this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a 
dignity becoming your exalted station, make the first ad- 
vances to concord, to peace and happiness ; for that is your 
true dignity, to act prudence and justice. That you should 
first concede is obvious from sound and rational policy. Con- 
cession comes with better grace and more salutary effect from 
superior power. It reconciles superiority of power with the 
feelings of men, and establishes solid confidence on the found- 
ations of affection and gratitude. 

Every motive, therefore, of justice and of policy, of digni- 
ty and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in Amer- 
ica, by a removal of your troops from Boston, by a repeal of 
your acts of parliament, and by a demonstration of amicable 
dispositions towards your colonies. On the other hand, every 
danger and every hazard impend, to deter you from perse- 
verance in your present ruinous measure. Foreign war hang- 
ing over your head by a slight and brittle thread. France 
and Spain watching your conduct, and waiting for the matu- 
rity of your errors ; with a vigilant eye to America, and the 
temper of your colonies, more than to their own concerns, be 
they what they may. 



YOU CANNOT CONQUER AMERICA. 317 

To conclude, my lords, if the ministers thus persevere in 
misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say, that 
they can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown ; 
but I will affirm, that they will make the crown not worth 
his wearing : I will not say that the king is betrayed ; but I 
will pronounce, that the kingdom is undone. 



LXXXIL— YOIT CAOTOT CONQUER AMERICA. 

CHATHAM. 

My lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we 
cannot act with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us 
to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, 
to rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which sur- 
round it. The desperate state of our arms abroad is in part 
known : no man thinks more highly of them than I do. I love 
and honor the English troops. I know their virtues and their 
valor. I know they can achieve anything except impossibil- 
ities ; and I know that the conquest of English America is 
an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you can- 
not conquer America. ■ Your armies in the last war effected 
everything that could be effected ; and what was it ? It cost 
a numerous army, under the command of a most able gene- 
ral, now a noble lord in this House, a long and laborious 
campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French 
America. My lords, yon cannot conquer America. What 
is your present situation then ? We do not know the worst ; 
but we know that in three campaigns we have done noth- 
ing and suffered much. Besides the sufferings, perhaps total 
loss, of the northern force ; the best appointed army that ever 
took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired 
from the American lines. He was obliged to relinquish his 
attempt, and, with great delay and danger, to adopt a new 
and distant place of operations. We shall soou know, and 
in any event have reason to lament, what may have hap- 
pened since. As to conquest, therefore, my lords, I repeat, it 
is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every ef- 
fort still more extravagantly ; piie and accumulate every as- 
sistance you can buy or borrow ; traffic and barter with every 
little pitiful German prince, that sells and sends his subjects 



318 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

to the shambles of a foreign prince ; your efforts are forevei 
vain and impotent : doubly so from this mercenary aid on 
which you rely. For it irritates, to an incurable resentment, 
the minds of your enemies — to overrun them with the 
mercenary sons of rapine and plunder ; devoting them and 
their positions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty ! If I were 
an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop 
was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms 
— never — never — never ! 



LXXXTIT.— DAYS OF DESOLATION. 

ALISON. 

This inundation of infidelity was soon followed by sterner 
days ; to the unrestrained indulgence of passion, succeeded 
the unfettered march of crime. With the destruction of all 
the bonds which held families together ; with the removal of 
all the restraints on vice or guilt, the fabric of civilization 
and religion speedily was dissolved. To the licentious orgies 
of the Jtegent Orleans succeeded the infernal furies of the 
tie volution : from the same Palais Royal from whence had 
sprung those fountains of courtly corruption, soon issued forth 
the fiery stream of democracy. Enveloped in this burning 
torrent, the institutions, the faith, the nobles, the throne 
were destroyed ; the worst instruments of the supreme jus- 
tice, the passions and ambition of men, were suffered to work 
their unresisted way : and in a few years the religion of 
eighteen hundred years was abolished, its priests slain or ex- 
iled, its Sabbath abolished, its rights proscribed, its faith un- 
known. Infancy came into the world without a blessing, 
age left it without a hope ; marriage no longer received a 
benediction ; sickness was left without consolation ; the village 
bell ceased to call the poor to their weekly day of sanctity 
and repose ; the village churchyard to witness the weeping 
train of mourners attending their rude forefathers to their 
last home. The grass grew in the churches of every parish 
in France ; the dead without a blessing were thrust into 
charnel-houses ; marriage was contracted before a civil ma- 
gistrate ; and infancy untaught to pronounce the name of 
God, longed only for the period when the passions and indul- 
gences of life were to commence. 



INDULGENCES TO THE CATHOLICS. 319 



LXXXIV.— INDULGENCES TO THE CATHOLICS. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

What amuses me the most is, to bear of the indulgences 
which the Catholics have received, arid their exorbitance in 
not being satisfied with those indulgences : now if you com- 
plain to me that a man is obtrusive and shameless in his re- 
quests, and that it is impossible to bring him to reason, I 
must first of all hear the whole of your conduct towards 
him ; for you may have taken from him so much in the first 
instance, that, in spite of a long series of restitution, a vast 
latitude for petition may still remain behind. 

There is a village (no matter where) in which the inhabi- 
tants, on one day in the year, sit down to a dinner prepared 
at the common expense ; by an extraordinary piece of tyranny 
(which Lord Hawkesbury would call the wisdom of the vil- 
lage ancestors), the inhabitants of three of the streets, about 
an hundred years ago, seized upon the inhabitants of the 
fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them upon 
their backs, and compelled them to look on while the rest 
were stuffing themselves with beef and beer ; the next year, 
the inhabitants of the persecuted street (though they contrib- 
uted an equal quota of the expense), were treated precisely 
in the same manner. The tyranny grew into a custom ; and 
(as the manner of our nature is), it was considered as the 
most sacred of all duties to keep these poor fellows without 
their annual dinner ; the village w r as so tenacious of this 
practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it ; every 
enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Provi- 
dence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to sue 
ceed in his election had nothing to do but to represent his 
antagonist as an abolitionist, in order to frustrate his ambition, 
endanger his life, and throw the village into a state of most 
dreadful commotion. By degrees, however, the obnoxious 
street grew to be so well peopled, and its inhabitants so firmly 
united, that their oppressors, more afraid of injustice, were 
more disposed to be just. At the next dinner they are un- 
bound, the year after allowed to sit upright, then a bit of 
bread and a glass of water ; till, at last, after a long series 
of concessions, they are emboldened to ask, in pretty plain 
terms, that they may be allowed to sit down at the bottom 
of the table, and to fill their bellies as well as the rest. 



*)20 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Forthwith a general cry of shame and scandal : " Ten years 
ago, were you not laid upon your backs ? Don't you remem- 
ber what a great thing you thought it to get a piece of bread? 
How thankful you were for cheese parings ? Have you for- 
gotten that memorable era, when the lord of the manor in- 
terfered to obtain for you a slice of the public pudding ? 
And now with an audacity only equalled by your ingrati- 
tude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, 
and- to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you 
may sit down to the table with the rest, and be indulged 
even with beef and beer : there are not more than half-a- 
dozen dishes which we have reserved for ourselves ; the rest 
has been thrown open to you with the utmost profusion; you 
have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, 
and delicious toast and water, in incredible quantities. Beef, 
mutton, lamb, pork, and veal, are ours; and if you were not 
the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would 
never think of aspiring to enjoy them." 



LXXXV— SAFETY ONLY IN THE REPUBLIC. 

LAMARTINE. 

For my part, I see too clearly the series of consecutive 
catastrophes I should be preparing for my country, to attempt 
to arrest the avalanche of such a Revolution, on a descent 
where no dynastic force could retain it without increasing its 
mass, its weight, and the ruin of its fall. There is, I repeat 
to you, a single power capable of preserving the people from 
the danger with which a revolution, under such social con- 
ditions, menaces them, and this is the power of the people ; 
it is entire liberty. It is the suffrage, will, reason, interest, 
the hand and arm of all — the Republic ! 

Yes, it is the Republic alone which can now save you from 
anarchy, civil and foreign war, spoliation, the scaffold, the 
decimation of property, the overthrow of society and foreign 
invasion. The remedy is heroic, I know, but, at crises of 
times and ideas like these in which we live, there is no 
effective policy but one as great and audacious as the crisis 
itself. By giving, to-morrow, the Republic in its own name 
io the people, you will instantly disarm it of the watchword 



ATTACHMENT OF A PEOPLE TO THEIR RELIGION. 321 

of agitation. What do I say ? You will instantly change 
its anger into joy, its fury into enthusiasm. All who have 
the Republican sentiment at heart, all who have had a dream 
of the Republic in their imaginations, all who regret, all who 
aspire, all who reason, all who dream, in France, — Repub- 
licans of the secret societies, Republicans militant, specula- 
tive Republicans, the people, the tribunes, the youth, the 
schools, the journalists, men of hand and men of head, — will 
utter but one cry, will gather round their standard, will arm 
to defend it, but will rally, confusedly at first, but in order 
afterwards, to protect the government, and to preserve 
society itself behind this government of all ; — a supreme force 
which may have its agitations, never its dethronements and 
its ruins ; for this government rests on the very foundations 
of the nation. It alone appeals to all. This government 
only can maintain itself ; .his alone can govern itself; this 
only can unite, in the voices and hands of all, the reason and 
will, the arms and suffrages, necessary to serve not only the 
nation from servitude, but society, the family relation, prop- 
erty and morality, which are menaced by the cataclysm of 
ideas which are fermenting beneath the foundations of this 
half-crumbled throne. If anarchy can be subdued, mark it 
well, it is by the Republic ! If communism can be conquered, 
it is by the Republic ! If revolution can be moderated, it is 
by the Republic ! If blood can be spared, it is by the Re- 
public ! If universal war, if the invasion it would perhaps 
bring on as the reaction of Europe upon us, can be avoided, 
understand it well once more, it is by the Republic. This is 
why, in reason and in conscience, as a statesman, before God 
and before you, as free from illusion as from fanaticism, if 
the hour in which we deliberate is pregnant with a revolu- 
tion, I will not conspire for a counter-revolution. I conspire 
for none — but if w r e must have one, I will accept it entire, 
and I will decide for the Republic ! 



LXXXVL— ATTACHMENT OF A PEOPLE TO THEIR 
RELIGION. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

If the great mass of the people, environed as they are on 
every side with Jenkenson's, Percevals, Mellvilles. and other 



322 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

perils, were to pray for divine illumination and aid, what 
more could Providence in its mercy do than send them the 
example of Scotland ? For what a length of years was it 
attempted to compel the Scotch to change their religion : 
horse, foot, artillery, and armed prebendaries, were sent out 
after the Presbyterian parsons and their congregations. The 
Percevals of those days called for blood ; this call is never 
made in vain, and blood was shed ; but to the astonishment 
and horror of the Percevals of those days, they could not 
introduce the Book of Common Prayer, nor prevent that 
metaphysical people from going to heaven their true way, 
instead of our true way. With a little oatmeal for food, and 
a little sulphur for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with 
the one hand, and holding his Calvinistical creed in the 
other, Sawney ran away to his flinty hills, sung his psalm 
out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two 
hours long, amid the rough imposing melancholy of the 
tallest thistles. But Sawney brought up his unbreeched off- 
spring in a cordial hatred to his oppressors ; and Scotland 
was as much a part of the weakness of England then as Ire- 
land is at this moment. The true and the only remedy was 
applied ; the Scotch were suffered to worship God after their 
own tiresome manner, without pain, penalty, and privation. 
No lightnings descended from heaven ; the country was not 
ruined ; the world is not yet come to an end ; the dignitaries 
who foretold all these consequences, are utterly forgotten , 
and Scotland has ever since been an increasing source of 
strength to Great Britain. In the six-hundredth year of our 
empire over Ireland, we are making laws to transport a man, 
if he is found out of his house after eight o'clock at night. 
That this is necessary, I know too well ; but tell me why it 
is necessary ? It is not necessary in Greece, where the 
Turks are masters. 



LXXXVII.— SPEECH OF ICIL1US TO THE ROMANS. 

ALFIERI. 

Listen to my words, people of Rome ! I who hereto- 
fore have never been deceitful, who have never either be- 
traved or sold my honor ; who boast an ignoble origin, but a 



JOAN OP ARC AND BISHOP OF BEAUVATS. 323 

noble heart ! hear me. This innocent free maid is daughter 
of Virginius. At such a name, I see your eyes flash with 
resplendent fire. Virginius is fighting for you in the field : 
think on the depravity of the times ; meanwhile, exposed to 
shame, the victim of outrage, his daughter remains in Rome. 
And who outrages her ? Come forward, Marcus ! show 
yourself. Why tremble you ? He is well known to you ; 
the last slave of the tyrant Appius and his first minister — of 
Appius the mortal enemy of every virtue — of Appius the 
haughty, stern, ferocious oppressor, who has ravished from 
you your freedom, and, to embitter the robbery, has left you 
your lives. Virginia is my promised bride ; I love her. Who 
I am, I need not say ; some one may perhaps remind you 
I was your tribune, your defender ; but in vain. You trusted 
rather the deceitful words of another than my free speech. 
We now suffer in common slavery, the pain of your delusion. 
Why do I say more ? The heart, the arm, the boldness of 
Icilius is known to you not les> than the name. From you 1 
demand my free bride. This man does not ask her ; he 
styles her slave — he drags her, he forces her. Icilius or 
Marcus is a liar ; say, Romans, which it is. 



LXXXVIII.— VISIONS OF JOAN OF ARC AND BISHOP OF 
BEAUVAIS. 

DE QUINCEY 

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaf- 
fold — thou upon a down bed. But for the departing minutes 
of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, 
when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting 
from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer 
have the same truce from carnal torments ; both sink together 
into sleep ; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. 
When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, 
Bishop and Shepherd girl — when the pavilions of life were 
closing up their shadowy curtains about you — let us try, 
through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features 
of your separate visions. 

The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, from 
her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from hei 



324 TflE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

duel with fire, as she entered her last dream — saw Domremy, 
saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in 
which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival, 
which man had denied to her languishing heart — that resur- 
rection of spring-time, which the darkness of dungeons had 
intercepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty of 
forests— were by God given back into her hands, as jewels 
that had been stolen from her by robbers. With these, per- 
haps (Cor the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was 
given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. By special 
privilege, for her might be created, in this farewell dream, a 
second childhood, innocent as the first ; but not, like that, sad 
with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This mis- 
sion had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the 
skirts even of that mighty storm was drawing off. The blood, 
that she was to reckon for, had been exacted ; the tears, that 
she was to shed in secret, had been paid to the last. The 
hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been 
suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the 
scaffold she had triumphed gloriously ; victoriously she had 
tasted the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from 
her farewell dream, she had died — died, amidst the tt,ars of 
ten thousand enemies -died, amidst the drums and trumpets 
of armies — died, amidst, peals redoubling upon peals, volleys 
upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs. 



LXXXIX.--THE SAME—CONTINUED. 

DE QUINCEY. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! because the guilt-burthened man is in 
dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his 
crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror - rising 
(like the mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts) from 
the fens of death — most of all are reflected the sweet coun- 
tenances which the man has laid in ruins ; therefore I know, 
Bishop, that you, also, entering your final dream, saw Dom- 
remy — the fountain of which the witnesses spoke so much, 
showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews ; but neither 
dews, nor the holy dawn could cleanse away the bright spots 
of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, Bishop, 



JOAN OF ARC AND BISHOP OF BEAUVAIS. 325 

you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But as you 
draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would 
Dornremy know them again for the feature of her child ? 
Ah, but you know them. Bishop, well ! On, mercy, what a 
groan was that which the servants, waiting outside the Bish- 
op's dream at his bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as 
at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the 
woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not so to 
escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before 
he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he 
find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is 
there ! In glades, where only wild deer should run, armies 
and nations are assembling ; towering in the fluctuating 
crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There 
is the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is 
my lord of Winchester, the princely Cardinal, that died and 
made no sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to 
the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands 
so rapid are raising ? Is it a martyr's scaffold ? Will they 
burn the child of Dornremy a second time ? "No : it is a tri- 
bunal that rises to the clouds ; and two nations stand around 
it, waiting for a trial. Shall my lord of Beauvais sit again 
upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for the 
innocent ? Ah ! no : he is the prisoner at the bar. Already 
all is waiting ; the mighty audience is gathered, the court 
is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the 
trumpets are sounding, the judge is going to take his place. 
Oh! but this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel? 
"Counsel I have none : in heaven above, or on earth beneath, 
counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from 
me : all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this ? Alas, the 
time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches 
away into infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody to 
take your brief: I know of somebody that will be your coun- 
sel. Who is this that cometh from Dornremy ? Who is she 
that cometh in bloody coronation robes from Rheims ? Who 
is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the 
furnaces of Rouen ? This is she, the Shepherd girl, counsel- 
lor that had none for herself, whom I choose, Bishop, for 
yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. 
She it is, Bishop, that would plead for you : yes, Bishop, she 
— when heaven and earth are silent. 



PART n. 



SELECTIONS OF POETRY. 



SELECTIONS OF POETRY. 



I— SEAWEED. 

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 

When descends on the Atlantic 

The gigantic 
Storm- wind of the equinox, 
Landward in his wrath he scourges 

The toiling surges, 
Laden with seaweed from the rocks : 

From Bermuda's reefs ; from edges 

Of sunken ledges, 
In some far-off, bright Azore ; 
From Bahama, and the dashing, 

Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador ; 

From the tumbling surf that buries 

The Orkneyan skerries, 
Answering the hoarse Hebrides ; 
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting 

Spars, uplifting 
On the desolate, rainy seas ; — 

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main ; 
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches 

Of sandy beaches, 
All have found repose again. 



330 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

So when storms of wild emotion 

Strike the ocean 
Of the poet's soul, ere long 
From each cave and rocky fastness, 

In its vastness, 
Floats some fragments of a song : 

From the far-off isles enchanted. 

Heaven has planted 
With the golden fruit of truth, 
From the dashing surf, whose vision 

Gleams Elysian 
In the tropic clime of youth ; 

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor 

That forever 
Wrestles with the tides of Fate ~ 
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, 

Tempest-shattered, 
Floating waste and desolate ; — 

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 
Currents of the restless heart; 
Till at length in books recorded, 

They, like hoarded 
Household words, no more depar* 



II— THE WINDS. 

W. O. BRYANT. 

Ye winds, ye unseen currents of the air, 

Softly ye played a few brief hours ago ; 
Ye bore the murmuring bee ; ye tossed the hair 

O'er maiden cheeks, that took a fresher glow ; 
Ye rolled the round white clouds through depths of blue ; 
Ye shook from shaded flowers the lingering dew ; 
Before you the Catalpa's blossoms flew, 

Slight blossoms, dropping on the grass like snow. 



THE 8TEAMB0AT. 331 

How are ye changed ! Ye take the cataract's sound ; 

Ye take the whirlpool's fury and its might ; 
The mountain shudders as ye sweep the ground ; 

The valley woods lie prone beneath your flight. 
The clouds before you shoot like eagles past ; 
The homes of men are rocking in your blast ; 
Ye lift the roofs like autumn leaves, and cast, 

Skyward, the whirling fragments out of sight. 

The weary fowls of heaven make wing in vain, 

To escape your wrath ; ye seize and dash them dead. 
Against the earth ye drive the roaring rain ; 
The harvest's field becomes a river's bed ; 
And torrents tumble from the hills around, 
Plains turn to lakes, and villages are drowned, 
And wailing voices, midst the tempest's sound, 
Rise, as the rushing waters swell and spread. 

Ye dart upon the deep, and straight is heard 
A wilder roar, and men grow pale, and pray ; 

Ye fling its floods around you, as a bird 

Flings o'er his shivering plumes the fountain's spray. 

See ! to the breaking mast the sailor clings ; 

Ye scoop the ocean to its briny springs, 

And take the mountain billow on your wings, 
And pile the wreck of navies round the bay. 



Ill— THE STEAMBOAT. 

O. W. HOLMES. 

See how yon flashing herald treads 

The ridged and rolling waves, 
As, crashing o'er their crested heads, 

She bows her surly slaves ! 
With foam before and fire behind, 

She rends the clinging sea, 
That flies before the roaring wind, 

Beneath her hissing lee. 



332 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

The moraing spray, like sea-born flowers, 

With heap'd and glistening bells, 
Falls round her fast in ringing showers, 

With every wave that swells ; 
And, flaming o'er the midnight deep, 

In lurid fringes thrown, 
The living gems of ocean sweep 

Along her flashing zone. 

With clashing wheel, and lifting keel, 

And smoking torch on high, 
When winds are loud, and billows reel, 

She thunders foaming by ! 
When seas are silent and serene 

With even beam she glides, 
The sunshine glimmering through the green 

That skirts her gleaming sides. 

Now, like a wild nymph, far apart 

She veils her shadowy form, 
The beating of her restless heart 

Still sounding through the storm ; 
Now answers, like a courtly dame, 

The reddening surges o'er, 
The flying scarf of spangled flame, 

The Pharos of the shore. 

To-night yon pilot shall not sleep, 

Who trims his narrow' d sail ; 
To-night you frigate scarce shall keep 

Her broad breast to the gale ; — 
And many a foresail scoop'd and straiu'd, 

Shall break from yard and stay, 
Before this smoky wreath has stained 

The rising mist of day. 

Hark ! hark ! I hear yon whistling shroud, 

I see yon quivering mast ; 
The black throat of the hunted cloud 

Is panting forth the blast ! 
An hour, and whiiTd like winnowing chaff, 

The giant surge shall fling 
His tresses o'er yon pennon-staff, 

White as the sea-bird's wing: ! 



DEATH OF OSCEOLA. 3S3 

Yet rest, ye wanderers of the deep ; 

Nor wind nor wave shall tire 
Those neshless arms, whose pulses leap 

With floods of living fire ; 
Sleep on — and when the morning light 

Streams o'er the shining bay, 
0, think of those for whom the night 

Shall never wake in day ! 



IV.— DEATH OF OSCEOLA. 

ALFRED B. STREET. 

In a dark and dungeon room 

Is stretched a tawny form, 
And it shakes in its dreadful agony 

Like a leaf in the autumn storm. 
No pillar'd palmetto hangs 

Its tuft in the clear, bright air, 
But a sorrowing group, and the narrow wall, 

And a smouldering hearth is there. 

For his own green forest-home 

He had struggled long and well, 
But the soul that had breasted a nation's arms 

At the touch of a fetter, fell. 
He had worn wild freedom's crown 

On his bright unconquered brow 
Since he first saw the light of his beautiful skies : 

It was gone forever now ! 

But in his last dread hour, 

Did not bright visions come ? 
Bright visions that shed a golden gleam 

On the darkness of his doom : 
They calm'd his throbbing pulse, 

And they hung on his muttering breath : 
The spray thrown up from life's frenzied flood 

Plunging on to the gulf of death. 



334 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

The close walls shrank away ; 

Above was the stainless sky, 
And the lakes with their floating isles of flowers 

Spread glittering to his eye. 
O'er his hut, the live-oak spread 

Its branching gigantic shade, 
With its dots of leaves and its robes of moss 

Broad blackening on the glade. 

But a sterner sight is round, 

Battle's wild torrent is there, 
The tomahawk gleams and the red blood streams, 

And the war-whoops rend the air. 
At the head of his faithful band 

He peals forth his terrible cry. 
And he fiercely leaps 'mid the slaughter' d heaps 

Of the foe that but fought to die. 

One gasp — and the eye is glazed 

And still is the stiffening clay, 
The eagle soul of the chief had pass'd 

On the battle's flood away. 



V.— RHYME OF THE RAIL. 

J. O. SAXK. 

Singing through the forests, 

Rattling over ridges, 
Shooting under arches, 

Rumbling over bridges, 
Whizzing through the mountains, 

Buzzing o'er the vale, — 
Bless me ! this is pleasant, 

Riding on the Rail ! 

Men of different ' stations' 

In the eye of fame, 
Here are very quickly 

Coming to the same 



RHYME OF THE RAIL. 335 

High and lowly people, 

Birds of every feather, 
On a common level 

Travelling together ! 

Gentlemen in shorts, 

Looming very tall ; 
Gentlemen at large, 

Talking very small ; 
Gentlemen in tights, 

With a loose-ish mien ; 
Gentlemen in gray, 

Looking rather green. 

Gentlemen quite old, 

Asking for the news ; 
Gentlemen in black, 

In a fit of blues ; 
Gentlemen in claret, 

Sober as a vicar ; 
Gentlemen in Tweed, 

Dreadfully in liquor ! 

Stranger on the right, 

Looking very sunny, 
Obviously reading 

Something rather funny. 
Now the smiles grow thicker, 

Wonder what they mean i 
Kaith. he's got the Knicker- 

Bocker Magazine I 

Stranger on the left, 

Closing up his peepers, 
Now he snores amain, 

Like the Seven Sleepers ; 
At his feet a volume 

Gives the explanation, 
How the man grew stupid 

From ■ Association !' 

Ancient maiden lady 

Anxiously remarks, 
That there must be peril 

'Mong so many sparks ; 



<*36 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Roguish-looking fellow 
Turning to the stranger, 

Says it's his opinion 
She is out of danger ! 

Woman with her baby, 

Sitting vis-a-vis ; 
Baby keeps a squalling, 

Woman looks at me ; 
Asks about the distance, 

Says it's tiresome talking, 
Noises of the cars 

Are so very shocking ! 

Market-woman careful 

Of the precious casket, 
Knowing eggs are eggs, 

Tightly holds her basket ; 
Feeling that a smash, 

If it came, would surely 
Send her eggs to pot 

Rather prematurely ! 

Singing through the forests, 

Rattling over ridges, 
Shooting under arches, 

Rumbling over bridges, 
Whizzing through the mountain*. 

Buzzing o'er the vale ; 
Bless me ! this is pleasant, 

Riding on the Rail ! 



VI— LORD OF BELMONT TOWER. 

W. M. PRAED. 

Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine, 

Many a ruin wan and gray 
O'erlooks the cornfield and the vine, 

Majestic in its dark decay. 



A SONG OF THE WAR. 837 

Among their dim clouds long ago 
They mocked the battles that raged below, 
And greeted the guests in arms that came 
With hissing arrow and scalding flame : 
But there is not one, of the homes of pride, 
That frown on the breast of the peaceful tide, 
Whose leafy walls more proudly tower 
Than these, the walls of Belmont Tower. 



Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine, 

Many a fierce and fiery lord 
Did carve the meat and pour the wine 

For all that revelled at his hoard. 
Father and son, they were all alike, 
Firm to endure, and fast to strike ; 
Little they loved but a Frau or a feast, 
But there was not one in all the land 
More trusty of heart, or more stout of hand, 
More valiant in field, or more courteous in bower, 
Than Otto, the Lord of Belmont Tower. 



VII.— A. SONG OF THE WAR. 

G. H. M'MASTER. 

In their ragged regimentals, 
Stood the old Continentals, 

Yielding not, 
When the grenadiers were lunging, 
And like hail fell the plunging 
Cannon shot ; 
When the files 

Of the isles [rampari 

From the smoky night encampment bore the banner of the 

Unicorn. [drummer, 

And grummer, grummer, grummer, rolled the roll of the 

Through the morn ! 

15 



138 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

But with eyes to the front all, 
And with guns horizontal, 

Stood our sires ; 
And the balls whistled deadly, 
And in streams flashing redly 

Blazed the fires ; 

As the swift 

Billows' drift 
Drove the dark battle breakers o'er the green sodded acres 

Of the plain, 
And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gunpowder, 

Cracking amain ! 



Now like^ smiths at their forges 
Labored red Saint George's 

Cannoniers, 
And the " villainous saltpetre" 
Rang a fierce discordant metre 

Around their ears ; 

Like the roar 

On a shore, 
Rose the Horse Guards' clangor, as they rode in roaring anger 

On our flanks ; 
Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire 

Through the ranks ! 



And the old-fashioned Colonel 
Galloped through the white infernal 

Powder cloud ; 
His broad-sword was swinging 
And his brazen throat was ringing, 

Trumpet loud ; 

Then the blue 

Bullets flew, 
And the trooper jackets redden'd at the touch of the leaden 

Rifle breath, 
And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared the iron six-pounder. 

Hurling death ! 



PRESS ON. 339 

VIII— PRESS ON. 

FROM A VALEDICTORY POEM. 

N. P. WILLI8. 

We shall go forth together. There will come 

Alike the day of trial unto all, 

And the rude world will buffet us alike. 

Temptation hath a music for all ears ; 

And mad ambition trumpeteth to all ; 

And the ungovernable thoughts within 

Will be in every bosom eloquent ; — 

But when the silence and the calm come on, 

And the high seal of character is set, 

We shall not all be similar. The flow 

Of lifetime is a graduated scale , 

And deeper than the vanities of power, 

Or the vain pomp of glory, there is writ 

A standard measuring its worth ibr Heaven. 

The pathway to the grave may be the same, 

And the proud man shall tread it, and the low, 

With his bow'd head, shall bear him company. 

Decay will make no difference, and death, 

With his cold hand, shall make no difference ; 

And there will be no precedence of power, 

In waking at the coming trump of Grod : 

But in the temper of the invisible mind, 

The godlike and undying intellect, 

There are distinctions that will live in heaven. 

When time is a forgotten circumstance ! 

The soul of man 
Createth its own destiny of power ; 
And as the trial is intenser here, 
His being hath a nobler strength in heaven 

What is its earthly victory ? Press on ! 
For it hath tempted angels. Yet press on ! 
For it shall make you mighty among men ; 
And from the eyrie of your eagle thought, 
Ye shall look down on monarchs. press or 
For the high ones and powerful shall come 
To do you reverence : and the beautiful 
Will know the purer language of your brow, . 



340 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And read it like a talisman of love ! 

Press on ! for it is godlike to unloose 

The spirit, and forget yourself in thought ; 

Bending a pinion for the deeper sky, 

And, in the very fetters of your flesh, 

Mating with the pure essences of heaven ! 

Press on ! — u for in the grave there is no work, 

And no device ." — Press on ! while yet ye may ! 



IX.— ALNWICK CASTLE. 

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 

Home of the Percy's high-born race, 

Home of their beautiful and brave, 
Alike their birth and burial place, 

Their cradle and their grave ! 
Still sternly o'er the castle's gate 
Their house's lion stands in state, 

As in his proud departed hours ; 
And warriors frown in stone on high, 
And feudal banners "flout the sky" 

Above his princely towers. 

A gentle hill its side inclines, 

Lovely in England's fadeless green, 
To meet the quiet stream which winds 

Through this romantic scene. 
As silently and sweetly still, 
As when, at evening, on that hill, 

While summer's wind blew soft and low, 
Seated by gallant Hotspur's side, 
His Katharine was a happy bride, 

A thousand years ago. 

Wild roses by the abbey towers 

Are gay in their young bud and bloom : 

They were born of a race of funeral flowers 

That garlanded, in long-gone hours, 
A Templars' knightly tomb. 



QUIN AND FOOTE. 341 

He died, the sword in his mailed hand, 
On the holiest spot of the Blessed Land, 

Where the cross was damp'd with his dying breath, 
When blood ran free as festal wine, 
And the sainted air of Palestine 

Was thick with the darts of death. 

Wise with the lore of centuries, 

What tales, if there be "tongues in trees" 

Those giant oaks could tell, 
Of beings born and buried here ; 
Tales of the peasant and the peer, 
Tales of the bridal and the bier, 

The welcome and farew r ell, 
Since on their boughs the startled bird 
First, in her twilight slumbers, heard 

The Norman's curfew-bell. 



X.— QUIN AND FOOTE. 

ANONYMOUS. 

As Q,uin and Foote, 
One day walked out 

To view the country round, 
In merry mood 
They chatting stood, 

Hard by the village-pound. 

Foote from his poke 
A shilling took, 

And said, "I'll bet a penny, 
In a short space 
Within this place 

I'll make this piece a guinea." 

Upon the ground. 
Within the pound, 

The shilling soon w r as thrown : 
" Behold," says Foote, 
" The thing's made out, 

For there is one pound one." 



342 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



" I wonder not," 

Says Cluin, "that thought 

Should in your head be found. 
Since that's the way 
Your debts you pay — 

One shilling in the pound." 



XL— THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 

SHAKSPEARE 

The quality of mercy is not strain'd ; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless'd ; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes ; 
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown : 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 
But mercy is above his sceptered sway, 
It is enthroned in the heart's of kings, 
It is an attribute to God himself ; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
When mercy seasons justice. 



XII.— FROM HENRY V. 

SHAKSPEARE 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; 
Or close the wall up with our English dead ! 
In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, 
As modest stillness, and humility : 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger ; 
Stiffen the siuews, summon up the blood, 
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor' d rage ; 



SLEEP. 343 

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; 

Let it pry through the portage of the head, 

Like the brass cannon ; let the brow o'erwhelm it, 

As fearfully as doth a galled rock 

O'erhang and jutty his confounded* base, 

Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. 

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide ; 

Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 

To his full height ! 



XIII— SLEEP 

SHAKSPEARE, 

Sleep, gentle sleep, 

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 

And steep my senses in forgetful n ess ? 

Why, rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee. 

And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber ; 

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 

Under the canopies of costly state, 

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody ? 

thou dull god ! why liest thou with the vile, 

In loathsome beds ; and leav'st the kingly couch, 

A watch-case or a common 'larum bell ? 

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 

In cradle of the rude imperious surge ; 

And in the visitation of the winds 

Who take the ruffian billows by the top 

Curlingtheir monstrous heads, and hanging them 

With deaf 'ning clamors, in the slippery clouds, 

That with the burly, death itself awakes ? 

Canst thou, partial sleep ! give thy repose 

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; 

And, in the calmest, and most stillest night, 

With all appliances and means to boot, 

Deny it to a king ? Then, happy low, lie down ! 

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. 

* Worn. 



34 l THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XIV.— SOLILOQUY OF MACBETH. 

SHAKSPEABK 

If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well 
It were done quickly : If the assassination 
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
With his surcease, success ; that hut this blow 
Might he the be-all and the end-all here, 
But here upon this bank arid shoal of time, — 
We'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases, 
We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return 
To plague the inventor : This even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice 
To our own lips. He's here in double trust : 
First as I am his kinsman and his subject, 
Strong both against the deed ; then, as his host, 
Who should against his murderer shut the door, 
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking off: 
And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur 
To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, 
And falls on the other. 



XV.— VENICE AND AMERICA. 



Oh Venice, Venice ! when thy marble walls 
Are level with the waters, there shall be 

A cry of nations, o'er thy sunken halls, 
A loud lament along the sweeping sea ! 



VENICE AND AMERICA. 345 

If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee, 

What should thy sons do ? — anything but weep : 

And yet they only murmur in their sleep. 

In contrast with their fathers — as the slime, 

The dull green ooze of the receding deep, 

Is with the dashing springtide foam 

That drives the sailor shipless to his home, 

Are they to those that were ; and thus they creep, 

Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets 

Oh ! agony — that centuries should reap . 

No mellower harvest ! Thirteen hundred years 

Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears ; 

And every monument the stranger meets, 

Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets ; 

And even the Lion all subdued appears, 

And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 

With dull and daily dissonance, repeats 

The echo of thy tyrant's voice along 

The soft waves, once all musical to song, 

That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng 

Of gondolas — and to the busy hum 

Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds 

Were but the overheating of the heart, 

And flow of too much happiness, which needs 

The aid of age to turn its course apart 

From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 

Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. 

The name of Commonwealth is past and gone 
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe ; 

Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own 
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe ; 

If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone 

His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time, 

For tyranny of late is cunning grown, 

And in its own good season tramples down 

The sparkles of our ashes One great clime, 

Whose vigorous ottspring by dividing ocean 

Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion 

Of freedom, which their fathers fought for, and 

Bequeathed — a heritage of heart and hand, 

And proud distinction from each other land, 

Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion, 

As if his senseless sceptre were a wand 

17* 



346 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Full of the magic of exploded science — 

Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, 

Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime, 

Above the far Atlantic ! — She has taught 

Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, 

The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag, 

May strike to those whose red right hands have bought 

Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still forever 

Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, 

That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 

Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, 

Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains, 

And moving, as a sick man in his sleep, 

Three paces, and then faltering : — better be 

Where the extinguished Spartans still are free, 

In their proud charnel of Thermopylae, 

Than stagnate in our marsh, — or o'er the deep 

Fly, and one current to the ocean add, 

One spirit to the souls our fathers had, 

One freeman more, America, to thee ! 



XVL— THE DYING GLADIATOR. 



BYRON. 



I see before me the gladiator lie : 
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony, 
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low — 
And through his side the last drops ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
The arena swims around him — he is gone, 
Ere ceas'd the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won. 

He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away. 
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize, 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, 
There were his young barbarians all at play, 
There was their Dacian mother— he, their sire, 
Butcher' d to make a Roman holiday — 
All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire 
And unavenged ? Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire ! 



THE HOUR OF DEATH. 347 



XVII— LYCIDAS. A MONODY. 

HILTON 

Yet once more, ye laurels, and once more 
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 
And, with forced fingers rude, 
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year : 
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, 
Compels me to disturb your season due : 
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and has not left his peer : 
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew 
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 
He must not float upon his watery bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, 
Without the meed of some melodious tear. 

But Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ; 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled arc 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky : 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves; 
Where, other groves and other streams along, 
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love, 
They entertain him all the saints above, 
In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move, 
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes. 



XVIIL— THE HOUR OF DEATH. 



FELICIA HEMAN9 



Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all, 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh Death ! 



348 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Day is for mortal care, 
Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth, 

Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer — 
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth. 

The banquet hath its hour, 
Its feverish hour of mirth, and song, and wine , 

There comes a day for grief's o'erwhelming power, 
A time for softer tears — hut all are thine 

Youth and the opening rose 
May look like things too glorious for decay, 

And smile at thee — but thou art not of those 
That wait the ripened bloom to seize their prey. 

We know when moons shall wane, 
When summer birds from far shall cross the sea, 

When autumn's hue shall tinge the golden grain — 
But who shall teach us when to look for thee ? 

Is it when spring's first gale 
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie ? 

Is it when roses in oar path grow pale ? — 
They have one season — all are ours to die ' 

Thou art where billows foam, 
Thou art where music melts upon the air ; 

Thou art around us in our peaceful home. 
And the world calls us forth — and thou art there. 

Thou art where friend meets friend, 
Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest — 

Thou art where foe meets foe, and trumpets rend 
The skies, and swords beat down the princely crest. 

Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north- wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all, 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh Death ! 



THE CLOUD. 349 



XIX— THE LOVED DEAD. 

FEUCIA HEMANS. 

The most loved are they, 
Of whom Fame speaks not with her clarion voice 
In regal halls ! — the shades o'erhang their way, 
The vale, with its deep fountains, is their choice, 

And gentle hearts rejoice 
Around their steps ! — till silently they die, 
As a stream shrinks from summer's burning eye, 

And the world knows not then, 
Not then, nor ever, what pure thoughts are fled ! 
Yet these are they that on the souls of men 
Come back, when night her folding veil hath spread, 

The lonof-remembered dead! 



XX.- -THE CLOUD. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers 

From the seas and the streams, 
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noon-day dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet birds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of theJashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under ; 
And then again I dissolve it in rain, 

And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

'I sift the snow on the mountains below, 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers 

Lightning, my pilot, sits ; 
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, 

It struggles and howls at fits. 



350 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 

Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 

Like a swarm of golden bees, 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 

Till the calm river, lakes and seas, 
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 

Are ^ich paved with the moon and these. 



XXI.— MARY'S GHOST. 



THOMAS HOOD. 



Twas in the middle of the night, 
To sleep young William tried, 

When Mary's ghost came stealing in, 
And stood at his bed-side. 



" William dear ! William dear ! 

My rest eternal ceases ; 
Alas ! my everlasting peace 
Is broken into pieces. 

I thought trie last of all my cares 
Would end with my last minute ; 

But though I went to my long home, 
I didn't stay long in it. 



The body-snatchers they have come, 
And made a snatch at me ; 

It's very hard them kind of men 
Won't let a body be. 



MARY'S GHOST. 351 

You thought that I was buried deep, 

Q,uite decent like and chary, 
But from her grave in Mary-bone 

They've come and bon'd your Mary. 

The arm that used to take your arm 

Is took to Dr. Vyse : 
And both my legs are gone to walk 

The hospital at Guy's. 

I vow'd that you should have my hand, 

But fate gives us denial ; 
You'll find it there, at Doctor Bell's, 

In spirits and a phial. 

As for my feet, the little feet 

You used to call so pretty, 
There's one, I know, in Bedford Row, 

The t'other's in the city. 

I can't tell where my head is gone, 

But Doctor Carpue can : 
As for my trunk, it's all pack'd up 

To go by Pickford's van. 

I wish you'd go to Mr. P. 

And save me such a ride ; 
1 don't half like the outside place, 

They've took for my inside. 

The cock it crows — I must be gone ! 

My William, we must part ! 
But I'll be yours in death, altho' 

Sir Astley has my heart. 

Don't go to weep upon my grave, 

And think that there I be ; 
They haven't left an atom there, 

Of my anatomic" 



352 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

XXII.— BATTLE OF BEAL' AN DUINE. 

WALTER SCOTT. 

At once there rose so wild a yell 
Within that dark and narrow dell, 
As all the fiends from heaven that fell, 
Had pealed the banner cry of hell ! 
Forth from the pass in tumult driven, 
Like chaff before the wind of heaven, 

The archery appear : 
For life ! for life ! their flight they ply — 
And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, 
And plaids and bonnets waving high, 
And broad-swords flashing to the sky, 
Are maddening in their rear. 
Onward they drive in dreadful race, 

Pursuers and pursued ; 
Before that tide of flight and chase, 
How shall it keep its rooted place, 
The spearmen's twilight wood ? 
— " Down, down," cried Mar, " your lances down! 

Bear back both friend and foe !" 
Like reeds before the tempest's frown, 
That serried grove of lances brown 

At once lay levelled low ; 
And closely shouldering side to side, 
The bristling ranks the onset bide. 
— " We'll quell the savage mountaineer, 

As their Tinchel cows the game ! 
They come as fleet as forest deer, 
We'll drive them back as tame." 

Bearing before them, in their course, 
The relics of the archer force 
Like wave with crest of sparkling ibam, 
Right onward did Clan-Alpine come. 
Above the tide, each broad-sword bright 
Was brandishing like beam of light, 

Each targe was dark below ; 
And with the ocean's mighty swing, 
When heaving to the tempest's wing, 
They hunted them on the foe. 
I heard the lance's shivering crash, 
As when the w T hiriwind rends the ash ; 



/ 



BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. 353 

I heard the broad sword's deadly clang, 
As if an hundred anvils rang ! 
But Moray wheeled his rearward rank 
Of horsemen on Clan-Alpine's flank — 

11 My banner-men, advance ! 
11 1 see," he cried, " their column shake — 
Now, gallants ! for your ladies' sake, 
Upon them with the lance !" 
The horsemen dashed among the rout, 

As deer break through the broom ; 
Their steeds are stout, their swords are out, 

They soon make lightsome room. 
Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne — 

Where, where was Roderick then ! 
One blast upon his bugle-horn 

Were worth a thousand men. 
And refluent through the pass of fear 

The battle's tide was pour'd ; 
Vanished the Saxon's struggling spear, 

Vanished the mountain's sword. 
As Brocklinn's chasm, so black and steep, 

Receives her roaring linn, 
As the dark caverns of the deep 

Suck the wild whirlpool in, 
So did the deep and darksome pass 
Devour the battle's mingled mass ; 
None linger now upon the plain, 
Save those who ne'er shall fight again. 



XXIII.— BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. 

CAMPBEIJ*. 

Of Nelson and the north, 

Sing the glorious day's renown, 
When to battle fierce came forth 

All the might of Denmark's crow r n, 
And her arms along the deep proudly shone ; 

By each gun the lighted brand 

In a bold, determined hand, 

And the prince of all the land 
Led them on. 



354 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Like leviathans afloat, 

Lay their bulwarks on the brine ; 
While the sign of battle flew 

On the lofty British line : 
It was ten of April morn by the chime 

As they drifted on their path, 

There was silence deep as death ; 

And the boldest held his breath, 
For a time. 

But the might of England flush'd 

To anticipate the scene ; 
And her van the fleeter rush'd 

O'er the deadly space between. 
" Hearts of oak," our captains cried ; when each gun 

From its adamantine lips 

Spread a death-shade round the ships, 

Like the hurricane eclipse 
Of the sun. 

Again ! again ! again ! 

And the havock did not slack, 
'Till a feeble cheer the Dane 

To our cheering sent us back ; — 
Their shots along the deep slowly boom : — 

Then ceased — and all is wail, 

As they strike the shattered sail ; 

Or in conflagration pale, 
Light the gloom. 

Now joy, old England, raise ! 

For the tidings of thy might, 
By the festal cities' blaze, 

While the wine-cup shines in light ; 
And yet amidst that joy and uproar, 

Let us think of them that sleep 

Full many a fathom deep, 

By thy wild and stormy steep, 
Elsinore ! 

Brave hearts ! to Britain's pride 

Once so faithful and so true, 
On the deck of Fame that died 

With the gallant good Riou : 



ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY. 355 

Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave ! 
While the billow mournful rolls, 
And the mermaid's song condoles, 
Singing glory to the souls 
Of the brave ! 



XXIV.— ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY. 

HORACE SMITH. 

And thou hast walked about — how strange a story ! — 
In Thebes's streets, three thousand years ago ! 

When the Memnonium was in all its glory, 
And time had not begun to overthrow 

Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous, 

Of which the very ruins are tremendous. 

Speak ! — for thou long enough hast acted dummy, 
Thou hast a tongue, come let us hear its tune ! 

Thou'rt standing ou thy legs, above ground, mummy ! 
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon, — 

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures, 

But with their bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features 

Tell us — for doubtless thou canst recollect, — 

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame ? — 

Was Cheops, or Cephrenes architect 

Of either pyramid that bears his name ? — 

Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer ? — 

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer ? 

Perhaps thou wert a mason, — and forbidden, 
By oath, to tell the mysteries of thy trade : 

Then say, what secret melody was hidden 

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise play'd ? 

Perhaps thou wert a priest ; — if so, my struggles 

Are in vain, — for priestcraft never owns its juggles ! 

Perchance that very hand, now pinion'd flat, 

Hath hob-a-nobb'd with Pharaoh, glass to glass, — 



%d(j thr book of eloquence. 

Or dropp'd a half-penny in Homer's hat,— 

Or doff'd thine own, to l^t (dueen Dido pass, — 
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation, 
A torch, at the great temple's dedication ! 

I need not ask tbee, if that hand, when arm'd, 
Has any Roman soldier maul'd and knuckled ? 

For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalm'd, 
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled : 

Antiquity appears to have begun 

Long after thy primeval race was run. 

Thou couldst develop, if that withered tongue 

Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen, 

How the world look'd when it was fresh and young, 
And the great deluge still had left it green ! — 

Or was it then so old that history's pages 

Coutaind no record of its early ages ? 



XXV.— THE PRESS. 

ELLIOTT 

God said — "Let there be liijht !" 
(xrim darkness felt his might, 
And fled away ; 
Then startled seas and mountains cold 
Shone forth, all bright in blue and gold 
And cried—" 'Tis day ! 'tis day !" 
" Hail, holy light !" exclaim'd 
The thunderous cloud that flamed 
O'er daisies white ; 
And lo ! the rose in crimson dress'd 
Lean'd sweetly on the lily's breast ; 

And blushing, murmur'd — " Light !" 
Then was the skylark born ; 
Theu rose the embattl'd corn ; 
Then floods of praise 
Flow'd o'er the sunny hills of noon ; 
And then, in stillest night, the moon 
Pour'd forth her pensive lays. 



THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS 357 

Lo, heaven's bright bow is glud ! — 
Lo, trees and flowers all clad 
In glory, bloom ! 
And shall the mortal sons of God 
Be senseless as the trodden clod, 

And darker than the tomb ? 
No, by the mind of man ! 
By the swart artisan ! 
By God, our sire ! 
Our souls have holy light within — 
And every form of grief and sin 
Shall see and feel its fire. 
By earth, and hell, and heaven. 
The shroud of souls is riven ' 
Mind, mind alone 
Is light, and hope, and life, and power ! 
Earth's deepest night from this bless'd hour, 
The night of minds is gone ! 
" The Press !" all lands shall sing ; 
The Press, the Press we bring- 
All lands to bless : 
pallid Want 1 Labor stark ! 
Behold, we bring the second ark ' 

The Press ! the Press I the Press f 



XXVI.— THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDiCULOUS. 

O. W. HOLMKS. 

I wrote some lines once on a time 

In wondrous merry mood . 
And thought, as usual, men would say 

They were exceeding good. 

They were so queer, so very queer, 

I laughed as I would die ; 
Albeit, in the general way, 

A sober man am I. 

I call'd my servant, and he came ; 

How kind it was of him, 
To mind a slender man like me, 

He of the mighty limb ! 



358 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

" There to the printer,'' I exclaimed, 
And, in my humorous way, 

I added, (as a trifling jest,) 

" There'll be the devil to pay." 

He took the paper, and I watch'd, 
And saw him peep within ; 

At the first line he read, his face 
Was all upon the grin. 

He read the next ; the grin grew broad, 
And shot from ear to ear ; 

He read the third ; a chuckling noise 
I now began to hear. 

The fourth ; he broke into a roar ; 

The fifth ; his waistband split ; 
The sixth ; he burst five buttons off, 

And tumbled in a fit. 

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, 
I watched that wretched man, 

And since, I never dare to write 
As funny as I can. 



XXVII.— HORATITJS. 

T. B. MACAULAY 

It stands in the Comitium 

Plain for all folks to see ; 
Horatius in his harness, 

Halting upon one knee ; 
And underneath is written, 

In letters all of gold, 
How valiantly he kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 

And still his name sounds stirring 

Unto the men of Rome, 
As the trumpet blast that cries to them 

To charge the Volscian home ; 



JOAN OF ARC. 3L0 

And wives still pray to Juno 

For boys with hearts as bold 
As his who kept the bridge so well 

In the brave days of old. 

And in the nights of winter, 

When the cold north- winds blow, 
And the long howling of the wolves 

Is heard amidst the snow ; 
When round the lonely cottage 

Roars loud the tempest's din, 
And the good logs of Algidus 

Roar louder yet within ; 

When the oldest cask is opened, 

And the largest lamp is lit, 
When the chestnuts glow in the embers 

And the kid turns on the spit ; 
When young and old in circle 

Around the firebrands close ; 
When the girls are weaving baskets, 

And the lads are shaping bows ; 

When the good man mends his armor, 

And trims his helmet's plume ; 
When the good wife's shuttle merrily 

Goes flashing through the loom ; 
With weeping and with laughter 

Still is the story told, 
How well Horatius kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 



XXVIII.— JOAN OF ARC. 



JOHN STERLING. 



Battle's blast is fiercely blowing, 
Clarions sounding, coursers bounding, 
Pennons o'er the tumult flowing, 
Host on host the eye astounding, 
Wave on wave that sea confounding, 
And in headlong fury going, 
Mounted kingdoms wildly dashing, 
Lance to lance, and steed to steed ; 
Now must haughtiest champions bleed, 



3H0 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And a myriad swords are flashing, 
Loud on shield and helmet clashing , 
Ne'er had men such noble spoil 
On this broad and bloody soil. 
As the storms a forest crushing, 
Oaks of thousand winters grind, 
So the iron whirl is rushing, 
Shouts before, and groans behind. 
Still amid the dead and dying, 
All in shatter' d ridges lying, 
Pride, revenge, and youthful daring, 
And their cause and country's name, 
Drive them on with sweep unsparing,- 
Naught for life and all for fame ! 
Still above the surge of battle 
Breathes the trump its fated gale, 
And the hollow tambours rattle 
Chorus to the deadly tale. 
Still is Joan the first in glory, 
Still she sways the maddening fight, 
Kindling all the flames of story, 
With an unimaj^ined might. 
Squadrons furious close around her, 
Still her blade is waving free ; 
Sword nor lance avails to wound her,- 
Terror of a host is she. 
Heavenly guardian, maiden wonder ! 
Long shall France resound the day 
When thou earnest clad in thunder, 
Blasting thy tremendous way. 



XXIX.— NAPOLEON'S RETURN. 

E. BARRET RROWNING. 

Nai oleon ! years ago, and that great word, 
Compact of human breath in hate and dread 
And exultation, skyed us overhead — 
An atmosphere, whose lightning was the sword, 
Scathing the cedars of the world, drawn down 
In burnings, by the metal of a crown. 



napoleon's return. 361 

Napoleon! Foemen, while they cursed that name, 
Shook at their own curse ; and while others bore 
Its sound, as of a trumpet, on before, 
Brass-fronted legions followed, sure of fame • - 
And dying men from trampled battle-sods, 
Near their last silence, uttered it for God's. 

Napoleon ! sages with high foreheads droop'd, 
Did use it for a problem ; children small 
Leapt up as hearing in 't their manhood's call . 
Priests bless'd it from their altars, overstoop'd 
By meek-eyed Christs. — and widows with a moan 
Breathed it, when questioned why they sate alone. 

Napoleon ! 'twas a high name lifted high ! 

It met at last God's thunder, — sent to cleat 

Our compassing and covering atmosphere, 

And open a clear sight beyond the sky 

Of supreme empire ! This of earth's was done — ■ 

And kings crept out again to feel the sun. 

The kings crept out — the people sate at home, — 

And finding the long-advocated peace 

A pall embroider' d with worn images 

Of rights divine, too scant to cover doom,- - 

Gnawed their own hearts, or else the corn lhat grew 

Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo ! 

A deep gloom center'd in the deep repose--- 
The nations stood up mute to count their dead — 
The bearer of the name which vibrated 
Through silence, — trusting to his noblest foes, 
When earth was all too gray for chivalry - - 
Died of their mercies 'midst the desert sea 

wild St. Helen ! very still she kept him, 
With a green willow for all pyramid, 
Stirring a little if the low wind did, — 
More rarely, if some pilgrim overwept him 
And parted the lithe bows, to see the clay 
Which seem'd to cover his for judgment day ' 
16 



362 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Nay ! not so long ! France kept her old affection, 

As deeply as the sepulchre the corse, — 

And now, dilated by that love's remorse 

To a new angel of the resurrection, 

She cried, " Behold, thou England, I would nave 

The dead thou wottest of, from out that grave." 

* * * * * * fair town 
Of Paris, how the wild tears will run down, 

And run back in the chariot marks of time, 
When all the people shall come forth to meet 
The passive victor ; death-still in the street 
He rode through 'mid the shouting and bell-chime 
And martial music, — under eagles which 
Dyed their ensanguined beaks at Austerlitz ! 

Napoleon ! he hath come again — borne home 
Upon the popular ebbing heart, — a sea 
Which gathers its own wrecks perpetually, 
Majestically moaning. Give him room ! 
Room for the dead in Paris ! Welcome solemn 
And grave-deep, 'neath the cannon-moulded column ! 

Napoleon ! Once more the recover'd name 
Shakes the old casements of the world ! and we 
Look out upon the passing pageantry, 
Attesting that the dead makes good his claim 
To a Gaul grave, — another kingdom won — 
The. last — of few spans — by Napoleon f 



XXX.— THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 

H. W. LONGFELLOW 

I have read in some old marvellous tale, 

Some legend strange and vague, 
That a midnight host of spectres pale 

Beleaguered the walls of Prague. 



THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 363 

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, 

With the wan moon overhead, 
There stood, as in an awful dream, 

The army of the dead. 

White as a sea-fog, landward bound, 

The spectral camp was seen, 
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 

The river flowed between. 

No other voice nor sound was there, 

No drum, nor sentry's pace ; 
The mist-like banners clasped the air, 

As clouds with clouds embrace. 

But, when the old cathedral bell 

Proclaimed the morning prayer, 
The white pavilions rose and fell 

On the alarmed air. 

Down the broad valley fast and far 

The troubled army fled ; 
Up rose the glorious morning star, 

The ghostly host was dead. 

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man 

That strange and mystic scroll, 
That an army of phantoms vast and wan 

Beleaguer the human soul. 

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, 

In fancy's misty light, 
Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam 

Portentous through the night. 

Upon its midnight battle-ground 

The spectral camp is seen, 
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 

Flows the River of Life between. 

No other voice, nor sound is there, 

In the army of the grave ; 
No other challenge breaks the air, 

But the rushing of Life's wave. 



304 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And, when the solemn and deep church-bell 

Entreats the soul to pray, 
The midnight phantoms feel the spell, 

The shadows sweep away. 

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 

The spectral camp is fled ; 
Faith shiueth as a morning star, 

Our ghostly fears are dead. 



XXXi.— ANTONY'S SPEECH OYER CAESAR'S BODY. 

SHAKSPEARB. 

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 

The evil, that men do, lives after them ; 

The good is oft interred with their bones ; 

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus 

Hath told you, Caesar was ambitious ; 

If it were so, it was a grievous fault ; 

And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. 

Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest, 

(For Brutus is an honorable man ; 

So are they all, all honorable men ;) 

Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. 

He was my friend, faithful and just to me : 

But Brutus says he was ambitious ; 

And Brutus is an honorable man 

He hath brought many captives to Rome, 

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill : 

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious ? 

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept : 

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: 

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious ; 

And Brutus is an honorable man. 

You all did see, that on the Lupercal, 

I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 

Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition ? 

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious ; 

And, sure, he is an honorable man. 

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, 

But here I am to speak what I do know. 



ANTONYS SPEECH OVER CiESAR*S BODY. 365 

You all did love him once, not without cause ; 
What cause withholds you then to mourn for hirr * 
judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
And men have lost their reason ! — bear with me 
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, 
And I must pause 'till it come back to me. 

But yesterday, the word of Caesar might 

Have stood against the world : now lies he th. c .,, 

And none so poor to do him reverence. 

masters ! if I were dispos'd to stir 

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, 

1 should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, 
Who, you all know, are honorable men : 

I will not do them wrong ; I rather choose 
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you, 
Than I will wrong such honorable men. 



XXXIL— THE SAME— CONTINUED. 

— Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel ; 
Judge, you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him ! 
This was the most unkindest cut of all : 
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, 
Ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms, 
Quite vanquish' d him : then burst his mighty heart ; 
And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 
Even at the base of Pompey's statue, 
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell. 
0, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! 
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, 
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us. 
0, now you weep, and I perceive you feel 
The dint of pity : these are gracious drops. 
Kind souls, what, weep you, when you but behold 
Our Caesar's vesture wounded ? Look you here, 
Here is himself, marr'd as you see, with traitors. 

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up 
To such a sudden flood of mutiny. 



366 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

They, that have done this deed, are honorable , 

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, 

That made them do it ; they were wise and honorable, 

And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. 

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts ; 

I am no orator, as Brutus is : 

But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, 

That love my friend : and that they know full well 

That gave me public leave to speak of him. 

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, 

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, 

To stir men's blood : I only speak right on : 

I tell you that, which you yourselves do know : 

Show you sweet Csesar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths 

And bid them speak for me : But were I Brutus, 

And Brutus Antony, then were an Antony 

Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue 

In every wound of Caesar, that should move 

The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. 



XXXIII.— UNION. 

ANONYMOUS. 

The blood that flowed at Lexington, and crimsoned bright 
Champlain, 

Streams still along the Southern Gulf, and by the lakes of 
Maine ; 

It flows in veins that swell above Pacific's golden sand 

And throbs in hearts that love and grieve by the dark At- 
lantic's strand. 

It binds in one vast brotherhood the trapper of the West, 
With men whose cities glass themselves in Erie's classic 

breast ; 
And those to whom September brings the fireside's social hours, 
With those who see December's brow enwreathed with 

gorgeous flowers ! 

From where Columbia laughs to meet the smiling western wave, 
To where Potomac sighs beside the patriot hero's grave ; 



THE BANNER OF MURAT. 3G7 

And from the steaming everglades to Huron's lordly flood, 
The glory of a nation's Past thrills through a kindred blood ! 

Say, can the South sell out her share in Bunker's gory 

height, 
Or can the North give up her boast of Yorktown's closing 

fight ? 
Can ye divide with equal hand a heritage of graves, 
Or rend in twain the starry flag that o'er them proudly 

waves ? 

Can ye cast lots for Vernon's soil, or chaffer 'mid the gloom 
That hangs its solemn folds about your common Father's 

tomb ? 
Or could you meet around his grave as fratricidal foes, 
And wake your burning curses o'er his pure and calm re- 
pose ? 

Ye dar.e not ! is the Alleghanian thunder-toned decree : 
'Tis echoed where Nevada guards the blue and tranquil sea ; 
Where tropic waves delighted clasp our flowery Southern 

shore, 
And where; through frowning mountain gates, Nebraska's 

waters roar ! 



XXXIV.— THE BANNER OF MURAT. 

PROSPER M WETMORE. 

Foremost among the first, 

And bravest of the brave ! 
Where'er the battle's fury burst, 

Or roll'd its purple w r ave, — 
There flashed his glance, like a meteor, 

As he charged the foe afar ; 
And the snowy plume his helmet bore 

Was the banner of Murat ! 

Mingler on many a field 

Where rung wild Victory's peal ! 
That fearless spirit was like a shield — 

A panoply of steel ; 



368 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

For very joy in a glorious name 
He rush'd where danger stood ; 

And that banner-plume, like a winged flame, 
Stream'd o'er the field of blood ' 

J J is followers loved to gaze 

On his form with a fierce delight, 
As it tower'd above the battle's blaze, 

A pillar 'midst the fight ; 
And eyes look'd up, ere they closed in death, 

Through the thick and sulphury air — 
And lips shriek'd out with their parting breath, 

" The lily plume is there !" 

A cloud is o'er him now — 

For the peril-hour hath come — 
And he stands with his high, unshaded brow 

On the fearful spot of doom ! 
Away ! no screen for a soldier's eye — 

No fear his soul appals : 
A rattling peal, and a shuddering cry, 

And bannerless he falls ! 



XXX.V.— THE PRISONER FOR DEBT. 

JOHN G. WHITTIKR 

Look on him — through his dungeon grate, 
Feebly and cold, the morning light 

Comes stealing round him, dim and late, 
As if it loathed the sight. 

Reclining on his strawy bed 

His hand upholds his drooping head — 

His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard, 

Unshorn, his gray, neglected beard ; 

And o'er his bony fingers flow 

His long, dishevelled locks of snow. 

What has the gray-hair' d prisoner done ? 

Has murder stain' d his hands with gore ? 
Not so : his crime's a fouler one : 

God made the old man 'poor ! 



THE PRISONER FOR DEBT. 369 

For this he shares a felon's cell — ■ 
The fittest earthly type of hell ! 
For this — the boon for which he pour'd 
His young blood on the invader's sword, 
And counted light the fearful cost — 
His blood-gain'd liberty is lost ! 

And so, for such a place of rest, 

Old prisoner, pour'd thy blood as rain 

On Concord's field and Bunker's crest, 
And Saratoga's plain ? 

Look forth, thou man of many scars, 

Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars ' 

It must be joy, in sooth, to &ee 

Yon monument uprear'd to thee — 

Piled granite and a prison cell — 

The land repays thy service well ! 

Go, ring the bells. and fire the guns, 

And fling the starry banner out ; 
Shout "Freedom !" till your lisping ones 

Give back their cradle shout : 
Let boasted eloquence declaim 
Of honor, liberty, and fame ; 
Still let the poet's strain be heard, 
With "glory" for each second word, 
And everything with breath agree 
To praise " our glorious liberty !" 

And when the patriot cannon jars 

The prison's cold and gloomy wall, 
And through its grates the stripes and stars 

Rise on the wind, and fall — 
Think ye that prisoner's aged ear 
Rejoices in the general cheer ? 
Think ye his dim and failing eye 
Is kindled at your pageantry ? 
Sorrowing of soul, and chain'd of limb, 
What is your carnival to him ? 
16* 



370 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XXXVL— THANATOPSIS. 

W. C. BRYANT 

To him who, in the love of Nature, holds 

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 

A various language. For his gayer hours 

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 

And eloquence of beauty ; and she glides 

Into his darker musings with a mild 

Arid gentle sympathy, that steals away 

Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 

Over thy spirit, and sad images 

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; — 

Go forth into the open sky, and list 

To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — 

Comes a still voice : — yet a few days, and thee 

The all-beholding sun shall see no more 

In all his course. Nor yet in the cold ground, 

Where thy pale form was laid with many tears, 

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again ; 

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 

Thine individual being, shalt thou go 

To mix forever with the elements, 

To be a brother to the insensible rock 

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 

Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 

Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould. 

Yet not to thy eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone, — nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kiugs, 
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good, 
Fair ibrms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales, 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 



THANATOPSIS. 37 J 

The venerable woods ; rivers that move 

In majes'y ; and the complaining brooks 

That make the meadows green ; and pour'd round all, 

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste — 

Are but the solemn decorations all, 

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 

The planets, all the infinite hosts of heaven, 

Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 

The globe are but a handful to the tribes 

That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 

Oi morning, and the Barcan desert pierce ; 

Or loose thyself in the continuous woods 

Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, 

Save his own dashings ; yet the dead are there ; 

And millions in those solitudes since first 

The flight of years began, have laid them down 

In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 

So shalt thou rest — and what if thou withdraw 
Unheeded by the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase 
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth, and their employments, and shall come, 
And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
Of ages glide away, the sons of men, 
The youth in life's green spring, as he who goes 
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, 
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man — 
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side, 
By those, who, in their turn, shall follow them. 

So live, that, when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent hall of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon : but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one who wiaps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 



372 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XXXVII.— MARMION'S DEPARTURE. 

WALTTR SCOTT. 

The train from out the castle drew ; 
But Marmion stopp'd to bid adieu : — 

" Though something I might plain," he said, 

'• Of cold respect to stranger guest, 

Sent hither by your king's behest, 

While in Tantallon's towers I staid ; 

Part we in friendship from your land, 

And, noble Earl, receive my hand." — 
But Douglas round him drew his cloak, 
Folded his arms, and thus he spoke : — 

" My manors, halls, and bowers, shall still 

Be open to my sovereign's will, 

To each one whom he lists, howe'er 

Unmeet to be the owner's peer, 

My castles are my king's alone, 

From turret to foundation stone — 

The hand of Douglas is his own ; 

And never shall in friendly grasp 

The hand of such as Marmion clasp." 

Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, 
And shook his very frame for ire, 

And—" This to me !" he said,— 
" An 'twere not for thy hoary head, 
Such hand as Marmion's had not spared 

To cleave the Douglas' head ! 
And, first, I tell thee, haughty Peer, 
He, who does England's message here, 
Although the meanest in her state, 
May well, proud Angus, be thy mate : 
And, Douglas, more, I tell thee here, 

Even in thy pitch of pride, 
Here, in thy hold, thy vassals near, 
(Nay, never look upon your lord, 
And lay your hands upon your sword,) 

I tell thee, thou 'rt defied ' 
And if thou said'st I am not peer, 
To any lord in Scotland here, 
Lowland, or Highland, far or uear, 

Lord Angus, thou hast lied !" 



U T0 ARMS." 373 

On the earl's cheek the flush of rage 
O'ercame the ashy hue of age : 
Fierce he broke forth : — " And dar'st thou then 
To beard the lion in his den, 

The Douglas in his hall ? 
And hop'st thou hence unscathed to go ? 
No, by Saint Bryde of Bothwell, no f — 
Up drawbridge, grooms — what, Warder ho 

Let the portcullis fall." 
Lord Marmion turned, — well was his need, 
And dashed the rowels in his steed, 
Like arrow through the archway sprung, 
The ponderous gate behind him rung : 
To pass there was such scanty room, 
The bars, descending, razed his plume. 



XXXVIIL— A DEATH-BED. 

JAMES ALDRICH 

Her suffering ended with the day, 

Yet lived she at its close, 
And breathed the long, long night away, 

In statue-like repose. 

But when the sun, in all its state, 

Illumed the eastern skies, 
She pass'd through Glory's morning-gate, 

And walked in Paradise ! 



PARK BENJAMIN 



XXXIX.— "TO ARMS." 

Awake ! arise, ye men of might ! 

The glorious hour is nigh, — 
Your eagle pauses in his flight, 

And screams his battle-cry. 

From North to South, from East to West : 
Send back an answering cheer, 



374 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And say farewell to peace and rest, 
And banish doubt and fear. 

Arm ! arm ! your country bids you arm ! 

Fling out your banners free — 
Let drum and trumpet sound alarm, 

O'er mountains, plain and sea. 

March onward from th' Atlantic shore, 

To Rio Grande's tide — 
Fight as your fathers fought of yore ! 

Die as your fathers died ! 

Go ! vindicate your ountry's fame, 
Avenge your country's wrong ! 

The sons should own a deathless name, 
To whom such sires belong. 

The kindred of the noble dead 
As noble deeds should dare : 

The fields whereon their blood was shed, 
A deeper stain must bear. 

To arms ! to arms ! ye men of might ; 

Away from home, away ! 
The first and foremost in the fight 

Are sure to win the day ! 



XL.— A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 

ANONYMOUS 

Where are the birds that sang 

A hundred years ago ? 
The flowers that all in beauty sprang 
A hundred years ago ? — 

The lips that smiled, 

The eyes that wild 

In flashes shone 

Soft eyes upon — 
Where, where are lips and eyes, 
The maiden's smile, the lover's sigh, 

That were, so long ago ? 



THE COLD WATER-MAN. 375 

Who peopled all the city's street 

A hundred years ago ? 
Who filled the church with laces meek, 
A hundred years ago? 

The sneering tale 

Of sfeter frail, 

The plot that work'd 

Another's hurt — 
Where, where, are plots and sneers, 
The poor man's hopes, the rich man's fears. 

That were so long ago ? 

Where are the graves where dead men slept 

A hundred years ago ? 
Who, whilst living, oft-times wept, 
A hundred years ago ? 

By other men 

They knew not then 

Their lands are tilled, 

Their homes are filled — 
Yet Nature then was just as gay, 
And bright the sun shone as to-day, 

A hundred years ago ! 



XLT.--THE COLD WATER-MAN". 

It was an honest fisherman 
I knew him passing well, — 

And he lived by a little pond, 
Within a little dell. 

For science and for books, he said 
He never had a wish, — 

No school to him was worth a fig, 
Except a school offish. 

A cunning fisherman was he, 
His angles all were right ; 

The smallest nibble at his bait 
Was sure to prove ; a bite !' 



J. G. SAXK 



376 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

All day this fisherman would sit 

Upon an ancient log, 
And gaze into the water, like 

Some sedentary frog ; 

With all the seeming innocence, 
And that unconscious look, 

That other people often wear 
When they intend to ' hook !' 

To charm the fish he never spoke, — 
Although his voice was fine, 

He found the most convenient way 
Was just to drop a line ! 

And many a gudgeon of the pond 
If they could speak to-day, 

Would own with grief, this angler had 
A mighty ' taking way !' 

Alas ! one day this fisherman 
Had taken too much grog, 

And being but a landsman, too, 
He couldn't ; keep the log !' 

'Twas all in vain with might and main 
He strove to reach the shore — 

Down — down he went to feed the fish 
He'd baited oft before ! 

The moral of this mournful tale, 
To all is plain and clear, — 

That drinking habits bring a man 
Too often to his bier ; 

And he who scorns to { take the pi edge,' 
And keep the promise fast, 

May be, in spite of fate, a stiff 
Cold ivater-man at last ! 



FUNERAL OF CHARLES THE FIRST. 377 



XLIL— A SEA FOG. 

CRAB 

When all you see through densest fog is seen ; 
When you can hear the fishers near at hand 
Distinctly speak, yet see not where they stand ; 
Or sometimes them and not their boat discern, 
Or, half conceal'd, some figure at the stern ; 
Boys who, on shore, to sea the pebble cast, 
Will hear it strike against the viewless mast ; 
While the stern boatman growls his fierce disdain, 
At whom he knows not, whom he threats in vain. 
'Tis pleasant then to view the nets float past, 
Net after net, till you have seen the last ; 
And as you wait till all beyond you slip, 
A boat comes gliding from an anchored ship, 
Breaking the silence with the dipping oar, 
And their own tones, as laboring lor the shore ; 
Those measured tones with which the scene agree, 
And give a sadness to serenity. 



XLIII.— FUNERAL OF CSARLES THE FIRST. 

BOWLES 

The castle clock had tolled midnight— 

With mattock and with spade, 
And silent, by the torches' light, 

His corse in earth we laid. 

" Peace to the dead" no children sung, 

Slow pacing up the nave ; 
No prayers were read, no knell was rung, 
As deep we dug his grave. 

We only heard the winter's wind, 

In many a sullen gust, 
As o'er the open grave inclined, 

We murmured, " Dust to dust !" 

A moonbeam, from the arches' height, 
Stream'd as we paced the stone ; 



378 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

The long aisles started into light, 
And all the windows shone. 

We thought we saw the banners then, 
That shook along the walls, 

While the sad shades of mailed men, 
Were gazing from the stalls : 

'Tis gone ! again, on tombs defaced, 
Sits darkness more profound, 

And only, by the torch, we traced 
Our shadows on the ground. 

And now the chilly, freezing air, 
Without, blew long and loud ; 

Upon our knees we breathed one prayer 
Where he — slept in his shroud. 

We laid the broken marble floor — 
No name, no trace appears — 

And when we closed the sounding door 
We thought of him with tears. 



XLIV.— THE FOUR ERAS. 

ROGERS 

The lark has sung his carol in the sky ; 

The bees have hummed their noon-tide harmony ; 

Still in the vale the village-bells ring round, 

Still in Llewellyn hall the jests resound : 

For now the caudle-cup is circling there, 

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their pray'r, 

And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire 

The babe, the sleeping image of his sire. 

A few short years — and then these sounds shall hail 
The day again, and gladness fill the vale ; 
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man, 
Eager to run the race his fathers ran. 
Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin ; 
The ale, now brewed, in floods of amber shine : 



THE SEMINOLE'S REPLY. 379 

And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze, 
'Mid many. a tale told of his boyish days, 
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled. 
" 'Twas on these knees he sat so oft and smiled." 

And soon again shall music swell the breeze ; 
Soon issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees 
Vestures of nuptial white ; and hymns be sung, 
And violets scattered round ; and old and young, 
In every cottage porch, with garlands green, 
Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene ; 
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side 
Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride. 

And once, alas, nor in a distant hour, 
Another voice shall come from yonder tower ; 
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen, 
And weepings heard where only joy has been ; 
When by his children borne, and from his door 
Slowly departing to return no more, 
He rests in holy earth with them that went before. 



XLV.— THE SEMINOLE'S REPLY. 

G. TV. PATTEN. 

Blaze, with your serried columns ! 

I will not bend the knee ; 
The shackles ne'er again shall bind 

The arm which now is free. 
I've mailed it with the thunder, 

When the tempest muttered low ; 
And when it falls, ye well may dread 

The lightning of its blow. 

I've scared ye in the city, 

I've scalped ye on the plain ; 
Go, count your chosen where they fell 

Beneath my leaden rain ! 
I scorn your proffered treaty ; 

The pale face I defy ; 
Revenge is stamped upon my spear, 

And " blood !" my battle-cry. 



38(* THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Ye've trailed me through the forest, 

Ye've tracked me o'er the stream ; 
And, struggling through the everglade, 

Your bristling bayonets gleam. 
But I stand as should the warrior, 

With his rifle and his spear ; — 
The scalp of vengeance still is red, 

And warns ye, " Come not here !" 

I loathe ye with my bosom, 

I scorn ye with mine eye ; 
And I'll taunt ye with my latest breath 

And fight ye till 1 die ! 
I ne'er will ask ye quarter, 

I ne'er will be your slave ; 
But I'll swim the sea of slaughter, 

Till I sink beneath the wave. 



XLVL— THE RISING OF THE NORTH. 

BRYAN W. PROCTOS. 

Hark — to the sound ! 
Without a trump, without a drum 
The wild-eyed, hungry millions come, 

Along the echoing ground. 

From cellar and cave, from street and lane, 
Each from his separate place of pain, 

In a blackened stream, 
Come sick, and lame, and old, and poor, 
And all who can no more endure ; 

Like a demon's dream ! 

Starved children with their pauper sire, 
And laborers with their fronts of fire, 

In angry hum, 
And felons, hunted to their den, 
And all who shame the name of men, 

By millions come. 



THE SOLDIER'S TEAR. 381 

The good, the bad, come hand in hand, 
Link'd by that law which none withstand ■ 

And at their head 
Flaps no proud banner, flaunting" high, 
But a shout — sent upwards to the sky, 

Of " Bread !— Bread /" 

-To-night the poor 



(All mad) will burst the rich man's door, 

And wine will run 
In floods, and rafters blazing bright 
Will paint the sky with crimson light 

Fierce as the sun ; 

And plate carved round with quaint device 
And cups all gold will melt, like ice 

In Indian heat ! 
And queenly silks, from foreign lands 
Will bear the stamps of bloody hands 

And trampling feet : 

And murder — from his hideous den 
Will com^ abroad and talk to men, 

Till creatures born 
For good (whose hearts kind pity nursed) 
Will act the direst crimes they cursed 

But vester-morn. 



XLVIL— THE SOLDIER'S TEAR. 

THOMAS H. BAYX* 

Upon the hill he turn'd 

To take a last fond look 
Of the valley and the village-church 

And the cottage by the brook ; 
He listened to the sounds, 

So familiar to his ear, 
And the soldier leant upon his sword, 

And wioed away a tear. 



382 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Beside that cottage porch 

A girl was on her knees, 
She held aloft a snowy scarf 

Which flutter'd in the breeze ; 
She breathed a prayer for him, 

A prayer he could not hear, 
But he paused to bless her, as she knelt, 

And wiped away a tear. 

He turn'd and left the spot, 

Oh, do not deem him weak ; 
For dauntless was the soldier's heart, 

Though tears were on his cheek ; 
Go watch the foremost rank 

In danger's dark career, 
Be sure the hand most daring there 

Has wiped away a tear. 



XLVIIL— LEONIDAS. 
I 

OFORGE CROLT. 

Shout for the mighty men 

Who died along this shore, — 
Who died within this mountain's glen .' 
For never nobler chieftain's head 
Was laid on valor's crimson bed, 

Nor ever prouder gore 
Sprang forth, than theirs who won the day, 
Upon thy strand, Thermopylae ! 

Shout for the mighty men, 

Who on the Persian tents, 
Like lions from their midnight den 
Bounding on the slumbering deer, 
Rush'd — a storm of sword and spear — 

Like the roused elements, 
Let loose from an immortal hand, 
To chasten or to crush a land ! 



BYRON. 3S3 



But there are none to hear ; 

Greece is a hopeless slave. 
Leonidas ! no hand is near 
To lift thy fiery falchion now : 
No warrior makes the warrior's vow 

Upon thy sea-washed grave 
The voice that should be raised oy men 
Must now be given by wave and glen. 



XL IX.— BYRON. 

poll: 

He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced. 
As some vast river of unfailing source, 
Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flow'd, 
And open'd new fountains in the human heait. 
Where fancy halted, wearying in her flight 
In other men, his, fresh as morning, rose, 
And soar'd untrodden heights, and seemed at home 
Where angels bashful look'd. Others, though great, 
Beneath their argument seem d struggling whiles ; 
He from far descending, stoop d to touch 
The loftiest thought ; and proudly stoop'd, as though 
It scarce deserved his verse. With nature's self 
He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest 
At will with all her glorious majesty. 
He laid his hand upon " the ocean's mane," 
And played familiar with his hoary locks ; 
Stood on the Alps, stood on the Apennines, 
And with the thunder talk'd, as friend to friend ; 
And wove his garland of the lightning's wing, 
Which as the footsteps of the dreadful God, 
Marching upon the storm in vengeance seemed : 
Then turn'd and with the grasshopper, who sung 
His evening song beneath his feet, conversed. 



S$4 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



L.— THE DROWNED MARINER. 

E. OAKES SMITH. 

A mariner sat on the shrouds one night, 

The wind was piping free ; 
Now bright, now dimm'd was the moonlight pale, 
And the phospor glearn'd in the wake of the whale, 

As it flounder' d in the sea ; 
The scud was flying athwart the sky, 
The gathering winds went whistling by, 
And the wave, as it tower'd, then fell in spray, 
Look'd an emerald wall in the moonlight ray. 

Wild the ship rocks, but he swingeth at ease, 

And holdeth hy the shroud ; 
And as she careens to the crowding breeze, 
The gaping deep the mariner sees, 

And the surging heareth loud. 
Was that a face looking up at him ; 
With its pallid cheek and its cold eyes dim ? 
Did it beckon him down ? Did it call his name 9 
Now rolleth the ship the way whence it came. 

The mariner look'd, and he saw with dread, 

A face he knew too well ; 
And the cold eyes glared, the eyes of the dead, 
And its long hair out on the wave was spread, — 

Was there a tale to tell ? 
The stout ship rock'd with a reeling gpeed, — 
And the mariner groaned, as well he need, 
For ever down as she plunged on her siae, 
The dead face glearn'd from the briny tide 

Bethink thee, mariner, well of the past . 

A voice calls loud for thee : 
There's a stifled prayer, the first, the last ; 
The plunging ship on her beams is cast. — 

O where shall thy burial be ? 

******** 

Alone in the dark, alone as the wave, 

To buffet the storm alone ; 
To struggle aghast at thy watery grave, 
To struggle, and feel there is none to save ! 

God shield thee, helpless one ! 



THE PERI'S BOON. 385 

The stout limbs yield, for their strength is past ; 
The trembling hands on the deep are cast ; 
The white brow gleams a moment more, 
Then slowly sinks,— the struggle is o'er. 

Down, down where the storm is hush'd to sleep, 

Where the sea its dirge shall swell ; 
Where the amber drops for thee shall weep, 
And the rose-lipp'd shell its music keep ; 

There thou shalt slumber well. 
The green and the pearl lie heap'd at thy side ; 
They fell from the neck of the beautiful bride, 
From the strong man's hand, from the maiden's brow. 
As they slowly sunk to the wave below 

A peopled home is the ocean-bed ; 

The mother and child are there : 
The fervent youth and the hoary head, 
The maid, with her floating locks outspread, 

The babe, with its silken hair : 
As the water moveth, they lightly sway, 
And the tranquil lights on their features play : 
And there is each cherish'd and beautiful form, 
Away from decay, and away from the storm. 



LL— THE PERI'S BOON. 

THOMAS MOOR& 

Downward the peri turns her gaze, 
And, through the war-field's bloody haze, 
Beholds a youthful warrior stand, 

Alone beside his native river, — 
The red blade broken in his hand, 

And the last arrow in his quiver. 
"Live," said the conqu'rer, "live to share 
The trophies and the crowns I bear." 
Silent that youthful warrior stood — 
Silent he pointed to the flood 
All crimson with his country's blood, 
Then sent his last remaining dart, 
For answer, to th' Invader's heart. 
17 



386 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

False flew the shaft, though pointed well ; 
The Tyrant lived, the Hero fell ! 
Yet mark'd the peri where he lay, 

And when the rush of war was past, 
Swiftly descending on a ray 

Of morning light, she caught the last — 
Last glorious drop his heart had shed, 
Before his free-born spirit fled ! 

" Be this," she cried, as she wing'd her flight, 
My welcome gift at the Gates of Light 

Though foul are the drops that oft distil 
On the field of warfare, blood like this, 

For Liberty shed, so holy is, 
It would not stain the purest rill, 

That sparkles among the Bowers of Bliss : 
Oh, if there be, on this earthly sphere, 
A boon, an offering, heaven holds dear, 
1 Tis the last libation Liberty draws, 
From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause!* 



LII.— THE BARDS. 

T. B. READ, 

When the sweet day in silence hath departed, 
And twilight comes, with dewy, downcast eyes, 

The glowing spirits of the mighty-hearted 
Like stars around me rise. — 

Spirits whose voices pour an endless measure, 
Exhaustless as the founts of glory are ; 

Until my trembling soul, o'erswept with pleasure, 
Throbs like a flooded star. 

Old Homer's song, in mighty undulations, 

Comes surging, ceaseless, up the oblivious main ; — 

I hear the rivers from succeeding nations 
Go answering down again : — 

Hear Virgil's strain in changeful currents startling, 
And Tasso's sweeping round through Palestine ; 



THE BARDS. 387 

And Dante's deep and solemn river rolling 
Through groves of midnight pine. 

I hear the iron Norseman's numbers ringing 
Through frozen Norway, like a herald's horn ; 

And like a lark hear glorious Chaucer singing 
Away in England's morn. 

In Rhenish halls I hear the Pilgrim lover 
Weave his wild story to the Availing strings, 

'Till the young maiden's eyes are brimming over, 
Like the sweet cup she brings. 

And hear from Scottish hills the soul's unquiet, 
Pouring in torrents their perpetual lays, 

As their impetuous mountain runnels riot 
In the long rainy days : — 

The world-wide Shakspeare, the imperial Spenser, 
Whose shafts of song o'ertop the angel's seats ; — 

While delicate, as from a silver censer, 
Float the sweet dreams of Keats ! 

Nor these alone ; for, through the growing present 
Westward the starry path of Poesy lies — 

Her glorious spirit, like the evening crescent, 
Comes rounding up the skies. 

I see the beauty which her light impartest ! 

I hear the masters of our native song ! 
The gentle-hearted Allston, poet-artist ; 

And Dana wild and strong. 

And he, whose soul like angel harps combining, 
Anthemed the solemn " Voices of the night." 

I see fair Zophiel's radiant spirit shining, 
Pale intellectual light. 

And Brainard, Sands, whose sweet memento mon 
Their own songs chime like melancholy bells, 

And him who chanted Melanie's sad story 
Along the Cascatelles. 



388 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And Bryant, in his own broad kingdom mildly 

Walking by streams, through woods and summer fields ; 

And iron-handed Whittier, when he wildly 
The fiery falchion wields ! 



MIL— DEATH OF ORISKA 

L. H. SIGOURNEY. 

Who is yon woman in her dark canoe, 
Who strangely toward Niagara's fearful gulf 
Floats on unmoved ? 

Firm and erect she stands, 
Clad in such bridal costume as befits 
The daughter of a king. Tall, radiant plumes 
Wave o'er her forehead, and the scarlet tinge 
Of her embroidered mantle, necked with gold, 
Dazzles amid the flood. Scarce heaves her breast, 
As though the spirit of that dread abyss, 
In terrible sublimity, had quelled 
All thought of earthly things. 

Fast by her side 
Stands a young, wondering boy, and from his lips, 
Half bleached with terror, steals the frequent sound 
Of "Mother! Mother!" 

But she answereth not ; 
She speaks no more to aught of earth, but pours 
To the Great Spirit, fitfully and wild, 
The death-song of her people. High it rose 
Above the tumult of the tide that bore 
The victims to their doom. The boy beheld 
The strange, stern beauty in his mother's eye, 
And held his breath with awe. 

Her song grew faint, — 
And as the rapids raised their whitening heads, 
Casting her light oar to the infuriate tide, 
She raised him in her arms, and clasped him close 
Then as the boat with arrowy swiftness drove 
On toward the unfathomed gulf, and the chill spray 
Rose up in blinding showers, he hid his head 
Deep in the bo^om that had nurtured him, 
With a low, stifled sob. 



ANNIE CLAYVILLE. 389 

And thus they took 
Their awful pathway to eternity. 
One ripple on the mighty river's brink. 
Just when it, shuddering, makes its own dread plunge, 
And at the foot of this most dire abyss 
One flitting gleam — bright robe — and raven tress — 
And feathery coronet — and all was o'er, — 
Save the deep thunder of the eternal surge 
Sounding their epitaph ! 



LIV.— ANNIE CLAYVILLE. 

ALICE CART. 

Very pale lies Annie Clayville ; 

Still her forehead, shadow-crowned, 
And the watchers hear her saying, 

As they softly tread around : 
11 Go out, reapers, for the hill-tops 

Twinkle with the summer's heat ; 
Lay out with your swinging cradles 

Golden furrows of ripe wheat ! 
While the little laughing children 

Lightly mixing work with play, 
From beneath the long green win rows, 

Glean the sweetly scented hay ; 
Let your sickles shine like sunbeams 

In the silver flowing rye ; 
Ears grow heavy in the cornfields 

That will claim you by-and-by. 
Go out, reapers, with your sickles, 

Gather home the harvest store ! 
Little gleaners, laughing gleaners, 

I shall go with you no more !" 

Round the red moon of October 

White and cold the eve-stars climb, 

Birds are gone, and flowers are dying ; 
'Tis a lonesome, lonesome time. 

Yellow leaves along the woodland 
Surge to drift ; the elm-bough sways, 



390 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Creaking at the homestead window 

All the weary nights and days ; 
Dismally the rain is falling, 

Very dismally and cold. 
Close, within the village grave-yard, 

By a heap of freshest ground, 
With a simple, nameless head-stone. 

Lies a low and narrow mound ; 
And the brow of Annie Clayville 

Is no longer shadow-crowned. 
Rest thee, lost one ! rest thee calmly, 

Glad to go where pain is o'er, 
Where they say not, through the night-time, 

" I am weary !" any more. 



LV.— LITTLE KINDNESSES. 

TALFOUEIX 

— In the sharp extremities of fortune 

The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter 

Have their own season. Tis a little thing 

To give a cup of water ; yet its draught 

Of cool refreshment, drain'd by fever'd lips. 

May give a shock of pleasure to the frame 

More exquisite than when nectarine juice 

Renews the joy of life in happiest hours. 

It is a little thing to speak a phrase 

Of common comfort, which by daily use 

Has almost lost its sense ; yet on the ear 

Of him who thought to die unmourn'd, 'twill fall 

Like choicest music ; fill the glazing eye 

With gentle tears ; relax the knotted hand 

To know the bonds of fellowship again ; 

And shed on the departing soul a sense, 

More precious than the benison of friends 

About the honored death-bed of the rich, 

To him who else were lonely, that another 

Of the great family is near and feels. 



THE SPIRIT OF MY SONG. 391 



LVL— THE SPIRIT OF MY SONG. 

METTA V. FULLER. 

Tell me — have you ever met her — 

Met the spirit of my song — 
Have her wave-like footsteps glided 

Through the city's worldly throng ? 
You will know her by a wreath, 

Woven all of starry light, 
That is lying 'mid her hair — 

Braided hair as dark as night. 

A short band of radiant summers 

Is upon her forehead laid, 
Twining half in golden sunlight, 

Sleeping half in dreamy shade ; 
Five white fingers clasp a lyre, 

Five its silvery fingers wake, 
And bewildering to the soul 

Is the music that they make. 

Though her glances sleep like shadows, 

'Neath each fallen, silken lash, 
Yet, like aught that wakes resentment, 

They magnificently flash. 
Though you loved such dewy dream-light, 

And such glance of sweet surprise, 
You could never bear the scorn 

Of those proud and brilliant eyes. 

There's a bright and winning cunning 

In her bright lip's crimson hue, 
And a flitting tint of roses 

From her soft cheek gleaming through ; 
Do you think that you have met her ? 

She is young, and pure and fair, 
And she weaves a wreath of starlight 

In her braided, ebon hair. 

Often at her feet I'm sitting, 

With my head upon her knee, 
While she tells me dreams of beauty 

In low words of melody. 



392 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

And, when my unskilful fingers 
Strive her silvery lyre to wake, 

She will smooth my tresses, smiling 
At the discord which I make. 

But of late days I have missed her — 

The bright being of my love, 
And perchance she's stolen pinions 

And has floated up above. 
Tell me — have you ever met her — 

Met the spirit of my song — 
Have her wave-like footsteps glided 

Through the city's worldly throng ? 



LVIL— POCAHONTAS. 

GEORGE P. MORRIS. 

Upon the barren sand 

A single captive stood, 
Around him came, with bow and brand, 

The red men of the wood. 
Like him of old, his doom he hears, 

Rock-bound on ocean's rim : — 
The chieftain's daughter knelt in tears, 

And breathed a prayer for him. 

Above his head in air, 

The savage war-club swung ; 
The frantic girl, in wild despair, 

Her arms about him flung. 
Then shook the warriors of the shade, 

Like leaves on aspen-limb, 
Subdued by that heroic maid 

Who breathed a prayer for him. 

" Unbind him !" gasped the chief, 

" It is your king's decree !" 
He kissed away her tears of grief, 

And set the captive free. 



A SOLEMN CONCEIT. 393 

'Tis ever thus, when, in life's storm 

Hope's star to man grows dim, 
An angel kneels in woman's form, 

And breathes a prayer for him. 



LVIIL— A SOLEMN CONCEIT. 

WM. MOTHERWELL. 

Stately trees are growing, 
Lusty winds are blowing, 
And mighty rivers flowing 

On, forever on. 
As stately forms were growing, 
As lusty spirits blowing, 
And as mighty fancies flowing 

On, forever on ; — 
But there has been leave-taking, 
Sorrow and heart-breaking, 
And a moan, pale Echo's making, 

For the gone, forever gone ! 

Lovely stars are gleaming, 
Bearded lights are streaming, 
And glorious suns are beaming 

On, forever on. 
As lovely eyes were gleaming, 
As wondrous lights were streaming, 
And as glorious minds were beaming 

On, forever on ; — 
But there has been soul-sundering, 
Wailing and sad wondering ; 
For graves grow fat with plundering 

The gone, forever gone ! 

We see great eagles soaring, 
We hear deep voices roaring, 
And sparkling fountains pouring 

On, forever on. 
As lofty minds were soaring, 
As sonorous voices roaring, 
And as sparkling wils w r ere pouring 

On, forever on ; — 
17* 



394 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

But, pinions have been shedding, 
And voiceless darkness spreading, 
Since a measure Death's been treading 
O'er the gone, forever gone ! 

Everything is sundering, 
Every one is wondering, 
And this huge globe goes thundering 

On, forever on ; — 
But, 'mid this weary sundering, 
Heart-breaking, and sad wondering, 
And this huge globe's rude thundering 

On, forever on, 
I would that I were dreaming 
Where little flowers are gleaming, 
And the long green grass is streaming 

O'er the gone, forever gone ! 



LIX.~ THE DEPARTED. 

PARK BENJAMIN 

The departed ! the departed ! 

They visit us in dreams, 
And they glide above our memories, 

Like shadows over streams ; — 
But when the cheerful lights of home 

In constant lustre burn, 
The departed — the departed 

Can never more return ! 

The good, the brave, the beautiful ! 

How dreamless is their sleep, 
Where rolls the dirge-like music 

Of the ever tossing deep, — 
Or where the hurrying night-winds 

Pale Winter's robes have spread 
Above the narrow palaces, 

In the cities of the dead ! 



SEVENTY-SIX. 305 

] sometimes dream their pleasant smiles 

Still on me sweetly fall ! 
Their tones of love I faintly hear 

My name in sadness call. 
I know that they are happy 

With their angel plumage on ; 
But my heart is very desolate, 

To think that they are gone. 



LX.— SEVENTY-SIX. 

W. U. BRYANT. 

What heroes from the woodland sprung 
When, through the fresh awakened land, 

The thrilling cry of freedom rung, 

And to the work of warfare sti ung 
The yeoman's iron hand ! 

Hills flung the cry to hills around, 

And ocean mart replied to mart 
And streams, whose springs were yet unfound, 
Pealed far away the startling sound 

Into the forest's heart. 

Then marched the brave from rocky steep, 

From mountain river swift and cold ; 
The borders of the stormy deep, 
The vales where gathered waters sleep, 
Sent up the strong and bold, — 

As if the very earth again 

Grew quick with God's creating breath, 
And, from the sods of grove and glen, 
Rose ranks of lion-hearted men 

To battle to the death. 

Already had the strife begun ; 

Already blood on Concord's plain 
Along the springing grass had run, 
And blood had flowed at Lexington, 

Like brooks of April rain. 



396 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

That death stain on the vernal sward 
Hallowed to freedom all the shore ; 
In fragments fell the yoke abhorred — 
The footstep of a foreign lord 
Profaned the soil no more. 



W. 0. BRYANT 



LXL— THE HURRICANE. 

Lord of the winds ! I feel thee nigh, 
I know thy breath in the burning sky ! 
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein, 
For the coming of the hurricane ! 

And lo ! on the wing of the heavy gales, 
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails ; 
Silent and slow, and terribly strong, 
The mighty shadow is borne along, 
Like the dark eternity to come ; 
While the world below, dismayed and dumb, 
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere 
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear. 

They darken fast ; and the golden blaze 

Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze, 

And he sends through the shade a funeral ray — 

A glare that is neither night nor day, 

A beam that touches, with hues of death, 

The clouds above and the earth beneath. 

To its covert glides the silent bird, 

While the hurricane's distant voice is heard, 

Uplifted among the mountains round, 

And the forests hear and answer the sound. 

He is come ! he is come ! do ye not behold 

His ample robes on the wind unrolled ? 

Giant of air ! we bid thee hail ! 

How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale , 

How his huge and writhing arms are bent, 

To clasp the zone of the firmament, 

And fold at length, in their dark embrace, 

From mountain to mountain the visible space. 



DEATH OF HARRISON. 397 

Darker — still darker! the whirlwinds bear 
The dust of the plains to the middle air : 
And hark to the crashing, long and loud, 
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud ! 
You may trace its path by the flashes that start 
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart, 
As the fire- bolts leap to the world below, 
And flood the skies with a lurid glow. 



LXIL— DEATH OF HARRISON. 

N. P. WILLIS. 

What ! soar'd the old eagle to die at the sun ! 
Lies he stiff with spread wings at the goal he had won ! 
Are there spirits more blest than the " Planets of Even," 
Who mount to their zenith, then melt into Heaven — 
No waning of fire, no quenching of ray, 
But rising, still rising, when passing away ? 
Farewell, gallant eagle ! thou'rt buried in light ! 
God speed into Heaven, lost star of our night ! 

Death ! Death in the White House ! &h, never before, 
Trod his skeleton foot on the President's floor! 
He is look'd for in hovel, and dreaded in hall — 
The king in his closet keeps hatchment and pall — 
The youth in his birth-place, the old man at home, 
Make clean from the door-stone the path to the tomb ;— 
But the lord of this mansion was cradled not here — 
In a church-yard far off stands his beckoning bier. 

He is here as the wave-crest heaves flashing on high — ■ 

As the arrow is stopp'd by its prize in the sky — 

The arrow to earth and the foam to the shore — 

Death finds them when swiftness and sparkle are o'er — 

But Harrison's death fills the climax of story — 

He went with his old stride — from glory to glory ! 

Lay his sword on his breast ! There's no spot on its blade 
In whose cankering breath his bright laurels will fade ! 
'Twas the first to lead on at humanity's call — 
It was stay'd with sweet mercy when " glory" was all ! 



398 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

As calm in the council as gallant in war, 

He ibught for his country, and not its " hurrah !" 

In the path of the hero with pity he trod — 

Let him pass — with his sword — to the presence of God ! 

What more ? Shall we on, with his ashes ? Yet, stay ! 
He hath ruled the wide realm of a king in his day ! 
At his word, like a monarch's, went treasure and land — 
The bright gold of thousands has pass'd through his hand- 
Is there nothing to show of his glittering hoard ? 
Nor jewel to deck the rude hilt of his sword — 
No trappings ? — no horses ? — what had he, but now ? 
On ! — on with his ashes ! — he left but his plough ! 
Brave old Cincinnatus ! Unwind ye his sheet ! 
Let him sleep as he lived — with his purse at his feet! 

Follow now, as ye list ! The first mourner to-day 
Is the nation — whose father is taken away ! 
Wife, children, and neighbor, may moan at his knell — 
He was " lover and friend" to his country, as well ! 
For the stars on our banner, grown suddenly dim, 
Let us weep, in our darkness — but weep not for him ! 
Not for him — who, departing, leaves millions in tears ! 
Not for him — who has died full of honor and years ' 
Not for him — who ascended Fame's ladder so high 
From the round at the top he has stepp'd to the sky ' 



LXIII— THE HAPPIEST LAND. 

FROM THE GERMAN. 

H. W. LONGFELLOW. 

There sat one day in quiet, 

By an ale-house on the Rhine, 
Four hale and hearty fellows, 

And drank the precious wine. 
The landlord's daughter filled their cups, 

Around the rustic board ; 
Then sat they all so calm and still, 

And spake not one rude word. 



HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS. 399 

But, when the maid departed, 

A Swabian raised his hand, 
And cried, all hot and flushed with wine, 

t: Long live the Swabian land ! 
The greatest kingdom upon earth 

Cannot with that compare ; 
With all the stout and hardy men 

And the nut brown maidens there." 

" Ha !" cried a Saxon, laughing, — 

And dashed his beard with wine ; 
" I had rather live in Lapland, 

Than that Swabian land of thine ! 
The goodliest land of ail this earth, 

It is the Saxon land ! 
There have I as many maidens 

As fingers on this hand !" 

" Hold your tongues ! both Swabian and Sax^n !" 

A bold Bohemian cries ; 
"If there's a heaven upon this earth, 

In Bohemia it lies. 
There the tailor blows the flute, 

And the cobbler blows the horn, 
And the miner blows the bugle, 

Over mountain gorge and bourne. ,, 

•J? JJP Jjp Jjp Jjp 1* 

And then the landlord's daughter 

Up to heaven raised her hand, 
And said, " Ye may no more contend, — 

There lies the happiest land !" 



LXIY.— HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS. 

AT THE CONSECRATION OF PULASKl's BANNER. 

H. W. LONGFELLOW 

Take thy banner ! May it wave 
Proudly o'er the good and brave ; 
When the battle's distant wail 
Breaks the sabbath of our vale, 



400 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

When the clarion's music thrills 
To the hearts of these lone hills, 
When the spear in conflict shakes, 
And the strong lance shivering breaks. 

Take thy banner ! and beneath 
The battle-cloud's encircling wreath, 
Guard it ! — till our homes are free ! 
Guard it!— God will prosper thee f 
In the dark and trying hour, 
In the breaking forth of power, 
In the rush of steeds and men, 
His right hand will shield thee then. 

Take thy banner ! But, when night 

Closes round the ghastly fight, 

If the vanquished warrior bow, 

Spare him ! — By our holy vow, 

By our prayers and many tears, 

By the mercy that endears, 

Spare him ! — he our love hath shared ! 

Spare him ! — as thou wouldst be spared ! 

Take thy banner ! — and if e'er 
Thou shouldst press the soldier's bier, 
And the muffled drum should beat 
To the tread of mournful feet, 
Then this crimson flag shall be 
Martial cloak and shroud for thee. 



LXV.— THE RED FISHERMAN. 

W. M. TRAED 

The abbot was weary as abbot could be, 
And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree : 
When suddenly rose a dismal tone — 
Was it a song, or was it a moan ? 

" Oh, ho ! oh, ho ! 

Above, below ! 
Lightly and brightly they glide and go ; 
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping, 
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping ; 



SIIYLOCK TO ANTONIO. 401 

Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy, 
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy !" 
In a monstrous fright, by the murky light, 
He look'd to the left and he look'd to the right, 
And what was the vision close before him, 
That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him ? 
'Twas a sight to make the hair uprise, 

And the life-blood colder run, 
The startled priest struck both his thighs, 

And the abbey clock struck one ! 

All alone by the side of the pool, 

A tall man sat on a three-legg'd stool 

Kicking his heels on the dewy sod, 

And putting in order his reel and rod ; 

Red were the rags his shoulders wore, 

And a high red cap on his head he bore ; 

His arms and his legs were long and bare ; 

And two or three locks of long red hair 

Were tossing about his scraggy neck, 

Like a tatter' d flag o'er a splitting wreck. 

It might be time, or it might be trouble, 

Had bent that stout back nearly double, 

Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets 

That blazing couple of Congreve rockets, 

And shrunk and shrivell'd that tawny skin, 

'Till it hardly cover'd the bones within. 

The line the abbot saw him throw 

Had been fashion'd and form'd long ages ago 

And the hands that worked his foreign vest 

Long ages ago had gone to their rest : 

You would have sworn, as you look'd on them, 

He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem ? 



LXVL— SHYLOCK TO ANTONIO. 

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft, 
In the Rialto you have rated me 
About my moneys, and my usances ; 
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug ; 
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe 



SHAKSPEA&E 



♦ 02 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

You call me — misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
And spit upon my Jewish gabardine, 
And all for use of that which is mine own.. 
Well then, it now appears, you need my help : 
Go to then ; you come to me, and you say, 
Shylock, we would have moneys ; You say so ; 
You that did void your rheum upon my beard, 
And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur 
Over your threshold ; moneys is your suit. 
What should I say to you ? Should I not say, 
Hath a dog money ? is it possible, 
A cur can lend three thousand ducats ? or 
Shall I bend low, and in a bondsman's key, 
With bated breath, and whispering humbleness, 

Say thus, 

Fair sir ; you spit on me on Wednesday last ; 
You spurned me such a day ; another time 
You calVd me — dog ; and for these courtesies 
Til lend you thus much moneys ? 



LXVII.— SPEECH OF ROBESPIERRE. 

COLERIDGE. 

Once more befits it that the voice of Truth, 

Fearless in innocence, though leaguer'd round 

By envy and her hateful brood of hell, 

Be heard amid this hall ; once more befits 

The patriot whose prophetic eye so oft 

Has pierced through faction's veil, to flash on crimes 

Of deadliest import. 

Soul of my honor'd friend ! 
Spirit of Marat, upon thee I call — 

Thou know'st me faithful, know'st with what warm zeal 
I urged the cause of justice, stripp'd the mask 
From faction's deadly visage, and destroy'd 
Her traitor brood. Whose patriot arm huiTd down 
Hebert and Rousin, and the villain friends 
Of Danton, foul apostate ! thou who long 
Mark'd Treason's form in Liberty's fair garb, 
Long deluged France with blood, and durst defy 
Omnipotence ! but I, it seems, am false ! 
I am a traitor too ! I — Robespierre ! 



MORNING MEDITATIONS. 403 

I — at whose name the dastard despot brood 

Look pale with fear, arid call on saints to help them ! 

Who dares accuse me ? who shall dare belie 

My spotless name ? Speak, ye accomplice band, 

Of what am I accused ? of what strange crime 

Is Maximilian Robespierre accused 

That through this hall the buzz of discontent 

Should murmur ; who shall speak ? 



LXVIII— MORXIJSTG MEDITATIONS. 

THOMAS HOOD. 

Let Taylor preach upon a morning breezy, 

How well to rise while night and larks are flying, 
For my part, getting up seems not so easy 
By half, as lying. 

What if the lark does carol in the sky, 

Soaring beyond the sight to find him out — 
Wherefore am I to rise at such a fly ? 

I'm not a trout. 

Talk not to me of bees and such like hums, 

They smell of sweet herbs at the morning prime ; 
Only lie long enough, and bed becomes 
A. bed of thyme 

To mo Dan Phcebus and his cars are naught, 

His steeds that paw impatiently about, 
Let them enjoy, say I, as horses ought, 

The first turn out. 

Right beautiful the dewy meads appear, 
Besprinkled by the rosy-fingered girl — 
What then — if I prefer my pillow dear 
To early pearl ? 

My stomach is not ruled by other men's, 

x^.nd grumbling for a season, quaintly begs — 
Wherefore should miser rise before the hens 
Have laid their eggs. 



404 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Why from a comfortable pillow start, 

To see faint flushes in the east awaken ? 
A fig, say I, for any streaky part, 

Excepting bacon. 

An early riser, Mr. Grey has drawn, 

Who used to haste the dewy grass among, 
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn — 

Well — he died young. 

With chairwomen such early hours agree, 

And sweeps that earn betimes their bite and sup, 
But I'm no climbing boy, and will not bo 
All up — all up. 

So here I'll lie, my morning calls deferring, 

'Till something to the stroke of noon ; 
A man that's fond precociously of stirring, 
Must be a spoon. 



LXIX.— THE CRYSTAL FOUNTAIN. 

CONVERSATION BETWEEN AN ANXIOUS MOTHER AND A POLICEMAN AT THE 

WORLD'S EXHIBITION. FROM PUNCH. 

ANONYMOUS. 

" Good policeman, tell me, pray 
Has my daughter passed this way ? 
You may know her by her bonnet, 
Yellow shawl, and brooch upon it, 
Far and near I've sought the girl ; 
I have lost her in the whirl : 
Do you think she yonder goes, 
Where the Crystal Fountain flows ?" 

" Ma'am," says he, " on this here ground, 
Whatsomdever's lost is found ; 
Rest quite heasy in your mind, 
I your daughter soon will find ! 
Though she's got to forrin lands, 
Hicy-imrgs or Hegypt's sands, 
Still, depend on't, soon she goes 
Where the Crystal Fountain flows ! 



THE CRYSTAL FOUNTAIN. 405 

" Perhaps Italian h'art attracts 

Her, or them there flowers in wax. 

May he she has got hup stairs 

In among" they heasy chairs ; 

And like Gulliver is sleeping, 

Where them Lillipushum's creeping : 

But she'll wake, and then she goes 

Where the Crystal Fountain flows ! • 

" Yet, good ma'am, I should explain, 
She may stop a bit in Spain ; 
Smelling of them Porto snuffs, 
Looking at the Turkish stuffs, 
Or if warm, a Chiny fan, 
Offered by the Tartar man, 
Will refresh her as she goes 
Where the Crystal Fountain flows ! 

" She may see the silver things, 
Little watches, chains and rings ; 
Or may-hap, ma'am, she may stray, 
Where the monster horgans play ; 
Or the music of all sorts, 
Great and small pianny forts, 
May detain her as she goes 
Where the Crystal Fountain flows ' 

" Or she may have gone in hope 
Of a patent henvelope 
To take home, — and if she's able, 
Try to see the Roman table ; 
Or insist on one peep more, 
At the sparkling Koh-hi-nore ; 
Then, the chance is, on she goes 
Where the Crystal Fountain flows \ n 

" Well, policeman, certainly 
You're the man to have an eye 
Over such a place as this, 
And to find a straying Miss ! 
Pray, good man, my daughter tell, 
When .she hears them ring the bell, 
I shall find her, if she goes 
Where the Crystal Fountain flows !" 



406 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

LXX.— SONG OF STEAM. 

GEO. W. CUTTER 

When I saw an army upon the land, 

A navy upon the seas, 
' Creeping along, a snail-like band, 

Or waiting a wayward breeze ; 
When I saw the peasant faintly reel, 

With the toil he faintly bore, 
As constant he turned at the tardy wheel, 

Or tugged at the weary oar ; 

When I measured the panting courser's soeed, 

The flight of the carrier dove, 
As they bore a law a king decreed, 

Or the lines of impatient love ; 
I could not but think'how the world would feel, 

As these were out-stripped afar, 
When I should be bound to the rushing keel, 

Or chained to the flying car ! 

Ha ! ha ! ha ! They found me at last ; 

They invited me forth at length ; 
And I rushed to my throne with a thunder-blast, 

And laughed in my iron strength ; 
Oh ! then you saw a wondrous change 

On earth and the ocean wide, 
Whence now my fiery armies range, 

Nor wait for wind or tide. 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! the waters o'er, 

The mountains steep decline; 
Time — space have yielded to my power— 

The world— the world is mine ! 
The giant streams of the queenly West, 

And the Orient floods divine. 

The Ocean pales where'er I sweep, 

To hear my strength rejoice, 
And monsters of the briny deep, 

Cower, trembling, at my voice. 



THE STORMING OF MONTEREY. 407 

I carry the wealth and the lord of the earth, 

The thoughts of the godlike mind, 
The wind lairs after my £oinof forth, 

The lightning is left behind. 

In the darksome depth of the fathomless mine, 

My tireless arm doth play, 
Whore the rocks ne'er saw the sun's decline, 

Or the dawn of the glorious day ; 
I bring earth's glittering jewels up 

From the hidden cave below, 
And I make the fountain's granite cup 

With a crystal gush o'erflow. 

I blow the bellows. I forge the steel 

In all the shops of trade ; 
I hammer the ore, and turn the wheel 

Where my arms of strength are made ; 
I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint, 

I curry, I spin, I weave ; 
And all the doings I put in print, 

On every Saturday eve. 

I've no muscle to weary, no breast to decay, 

No bones to be " laid on the shelf," 
And soon I intend you may " go and play," — 

While I manage the world myself. 
But harness me down with your iron bands ; 

Be sure of your curb and rein ; 
For I scorn the strength of your puny hands, 

As the tempest scorns a chain. 



LXXL— STORMIXG OF MOXTEREY. 

CHARLES FEN NO HOFFMAN 

We were not many — we who stood 

Before the iron sleet that day — 
Yet many a gallant spirit would 
Give half his years, if he but could 

Have been with us at Monterey. 



408 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Now here, now there, the shot it hailed 

In deadly drifts of fiery spray, 
Yet not a single soldier quailed 
When wounded comrades round them wailed 

Their dying shout at Monterey. 

And on — still on our column kept 

Through walls of flame its withering way ; 
Where fell the dead, the living stept, 
Still charging on the guns that swept 
The slippery streets of Monterey. 

The foe himself recoiled aghast, 

When, striking where the strongest lay, 
We swooped his flanking batteries past, 
And braving full their murderous blast, 
Stormed home the towers of Monterey. 

Our banners on those towers wave, 

And there our evening bugles play, 
Where orange boughs above their grave 
Keep green the memory of the brave 
Who fought and fell at Monterey. 

We were not many — we who pressed 
Beside the brave who fell that day ; 
But who of us has not confessed 
He'd rather share their warrior rest, 
Than not have been at Monterey. 



LXXIL— ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA. 

J. G. WHITTIER. 

Speak and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away. 
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array, 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far, or come they 

near ? 
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we 

hear 



ANGELS OF CUES' A VISTA. 409 

"Down the bills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls ; 
Blood is flowing, men are dying ; God have mercy on their 

son Is ! 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? — " Over hill and over plain, 
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain 

rain." 

Holy Mother ! keep our brothers ! Look, Ximena, look once 

more : 
" Still I see the fearfuL whirlwind rolling darkly as before, 
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and 

horse, 
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its 

mountain course." 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Ah ! the smoke has 

rolled away ; 
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray. 
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there the troop of Minon 

wheels ; 
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their 

heels." 

" Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now retreat and now advance ! 

Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging 
lance ! 

Down they go, the brave young riders ; horse and foot to- 
gether fall ; 

Like a ploughshare in its fallow, through them ploughs the 
Northern ball." 

Nearer came the storm, and nearer, rolling fast and fright- 
ful on : 

" Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who 
has won." 

" Alas ! alas ! I know not, friend and foe together fall, 

O'er the dying rush the living ; pray, my sisters, for them 
all !" 

" Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting : Blessed Mother save 

my brain ! 
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of 

slain. 

18 



410 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Now they stagger, blind and bleeding ; now they fall, and 

strive to rise ; 
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our 

eyes !" 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Like a cloud before the 
wind 

Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death 
behind ; 

Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in the dust the wounded 
strive ; 

Hide your faces, holy angels ! oh, thou Christ of God, for- 
give !" 

Sink, oh Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray 

shadows fall ; 
Dying brothers, fighting demons — drop thy curtain over all ! 
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle 

rolled, 
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew 

cold. 

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, 

Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint, and 
lacking food ; 

Over weak and suffering brothers with a tender care they 
hung, 

And the dying foeman bless'd them in a strange and North- 
ern tongue. 

Not wholly lost, oh Father ! is this evil world of ours ; 
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden 

flowers ; 
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their 

prayer, 
And still thy white- winged angels hover dimly in our air ! 



ENTRY" OF THE AUSTRIAN'S INTO NAPLES. 411 

LXXIIL— ENTRY OF THE ATJSTRIANS INTO NAPLES. 

THOMAS MOORE. 

Ar — down to the dust with them, slaves as they are, 
From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins, 

That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war 
Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains. 

On, on like a cloud, through their beautiful vales, 

Ye locusts of tyranny, blasting them o'er — 
Fill, fill up their wide sunny waters, ye sails 

From each slave-mart of Europe, and shadow their shore ! 

Let their fate be a mock- word, let men of all lands, 
Laugh out, with a scorn that shall ring to the poles, 

When each sword that the cowards let fall from their hands, 
Shall be forged into fetters to enter their souls. 

And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driv'n, 
Base slaves ! let the whet of their agony be, 

To think — as the Doom'd often think of that heav'n 

They had once within reach — that they might have been 
free. 

When the world stood in hope — when a spirit, that breathed 
The fresh hour of the olden time, whisper'd about ; 

And the swords of all Italy, half-way unsheath'd, 
But waited one conquering cry, to flash out ! 

When around you the shades of your mighty in fame, 
Filicajas and Petrarchs seem'd bursting to view, 

And their words, and their warnings, like tongues of bright 
flame 
Over Freedom's apostles, fell kindling on you ! 

Oh shame ! that in such a proud moment of life, 

Worth the hist'ry of ages, when had you but hurl'd 

One bolt at your tyrant invader, that strife 

Between freemen and tyrants had spread through the world 

That then — oh ! disgrace upon manhood — ev'n then 
You should falter, should cling to your pitiful breath ; 



412 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Cow'r down into beasts, when you might have stood men. 
And prefer the slave's life of prostration to death. 

It is strange, it is dreadful ; — shout, Tyranny, shout 

Through your dungeons and palaces, " Freedom is o'er;"- 

I( there lingers one spark of her life, tread it out, 
^.nd return to your empire of darkness once more. 



LXXIV.— FORGIVE AND FORGET. 

M. K. TUP PER. 

When streams of unkindness as bitter as gall, 

Bubble up from the heart to the tongue, 
And meekness is writhing in torment and thrall, 

By the hands of Ingratitude wrung, — 
In the heat of injustice, unwept and unfair, 

While the anguish is festering yet, 
None, none but an angel, or God, can declare 

" I now can forgive and forget." 

But, if the bad spirit is chased from the heart, 

And the lips are in penitence steep'd, 
With the wrong so repented the wrath will depart, 

Though scorn on injustice were heaped ; 
For the best compensation is paid for all ill, 

When the cheek with contrition is wet, 
And every one feels it is possible still, 

At once to forgive and forget. 

To forget ? It is hard for a man with a mind, 

However his heart may forgive, 
To blot out all perils and dangers behind, 

And but for the future to live : 
Then how shall it be ? for at every turn 

Recollection the spirit will fret, 
And the ashes of injury smoulder and burn, 

Though we strive to forgive and forget. 

Oh, hearken ! my tongue shall the riddle unseal, 
And mind shall be partner with heart, 

While thee to thyself I bid Conscience reveal, 
And show thee how evil thou art ; 



ROBERT BURNS. 413 

Remember thy follies, thy sins, and — thy crimes, 

How vast is that infinite debt ! 
Yet mercy hath seven by seventy times 

Been swift to forgive and fbnret ! 

Brood not on insults or injuries old, 

For thou art injurious too, — 
Count not their sum till the total is told, 

For thou art unkind and untrue : 
And if all thy harms are forgotten, forgiven, 

Now mercy with justice is met, 
Oh, who would not gladly take lessons of heaven, 

Nor learn to forgive and forget ? _ 

Yes, yes ; let a man, when his enemy weeps, 

Be quick to receive him, a friend ; 
For thus on his head in kindness he heaps 

Hot coals, — to refine and amend ; 
And hearts that are Christian more eagerly yearn, 

As a nurse on her innocent pet, 
Over lips that, once bitter, to penitence turn, 

And w r hisper, Forgive and forget. 



LXXV.— ROBERT BURNS. 

J. MOXTGOMIIR?. 

What bird, in beauty, flight, or song, 

Can with the Bard compare, 
Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as strong, 

As ever child of air ! 

His plume, his note, his form, could Burns 

For whim or pleasure change ; 
He Avas not one, but all by turns ; 

With transmigration strange ! 

The Blackbird, oracle of spring 

When flowed his moral lay ; 
The Swallow wheeling on the wing, 

Capriciously at play : 



414 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

The Humming-bird, from bloom to bloom, 

Inhaling heavenly balm ; 
The Raven, in the tempest's gloom ; 

The Halcyon, in the calm : 

In " auld kirk Alio way," the owl 
At witching time of night ; 

By " bonnie Doon," the earliest Fowl 
That caroll'd to the light. 

He was the Wren amidst the grove, 

When in his homely vein ; 
At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove, 

With thunder in his train : 

The Woodlark, in his mournful hours ; 

The Goldfinch, in his mirth ; 
The Thrush, a spendthrift of his powers, 

Enrapturing heaven and earth ; 

The Swan, in majesty and grace, 

Contemplative and still : 
But roused, — no Falcon, in the chase, 

Could like his satire, kill. 

The Linnet in simplicity, 

In tenderness the Dove ; 
Bat more than all beside was he 

The Nightingale in love. 

Oh, had he never stoop'd to shame, 

Nor lent a charm to vice, 
How had devotion loved to name 

That Bird of Paradise ! 

Peace to the dead ! — In Scotia's choir 
Of Minstrels great and small, 

He sprang from his spontaneous fire, 
The Phoenix of them all. 



OLD IRONSIDES. 415 

LXXVI.— OLD IRONSIDES. 

O. W. HOLMES. 

Aye, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long- has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky ; 
Beneath it rung the battle-shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar ; — 
The meteor of the ocean air, 

Shall sweep the clouds no more ! 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood 

Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 

And waves were white below, 
No more shall feel the victor's tread, 

Or know the conquered knee ; — 
The harpies of the shore shall pluck 

The eagle of the sea ! 

better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ; 
Her thunders shook the mighty dee]), 

And there should be her grave ; 
Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail, 
And give her to the god of storms, — 

The lightning and the gale ! 



LXXVIL— THE LAST LEAF. 

O. W. HOLMES. 

I saw him once before 
As he passed by the door, 

And again 
The pavement stones resound 
As he totters o'er the ground 

With his cane. 



416 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

They say that in his prime 
Ere the pruning-knife of time 

Cut him down, 
Not a better man was found 
By the crier on his round 

Through the town. 



But now he walks the streets 
And he looks at all he meets 

So forlorn, 
And he shakes his feeble head, 
That it seems as if he said, 

" They are gone." 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has prest 

In their bloom, 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb. 

My grandmamma has said, — 
Poor old lady, she is dead 

Long ago, — 
That he had a Roman nose 
And his cheek was like a rose 

In the snow. 

But now his nose is thin, 
And it rests upon his chin 

Like a staff, 
And a crook is in his back, 
And a melancholy crack 

In his laugh. 

I know it is a sin 
For me to sit and grin 

At him here ; 
But the old three-cornered, hat, 
And the breeches, and all that, 

Are so queer ! 



THE ENGLISH TONGUE. 41 7 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 

In the spring, — 
Let them smile, as I do now, 
At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. 



LXXVIIL— THE ENGLISH TONGUE. 

J. G. SAXE. 

In ancient times, I've heard my grandam tell, 
Young maids were taught to read, and write, and spell ; 
(Neglected arts ! once learned by rigid rules 
As prime essentials in the ' common schools/) 
Well taught beside in many a useful art 
To mend the manners and improve the heart ; 
Nor yet unskilled to turn the busy wheel, 
To ply the shuttle and to twirl the reel, 
Could thrifty tasks with cheerful grace pursue, 
Themselves l accomplished,' and their duties too. 
Of tongues, each maiden had but one, 'tis said, 
(Enough, 'twas thought to serve a ladies' head,) 
But that was English, — great and glorious tongue ; 
That Chatham spoke, and Milton, Shakspeare, sung ; 
Let thoughts, too idle to be fitly dressed 
In sturdy Saxon, be in French expressed ; 
Let lovers breathe Italian, — like, in sooth, 
Its singers, soft, emasculate, and smooth ; 
But for a tongue, whose ample powers embrace 
Beauty and force, sublimity and grace, 
Ornate or plain, harmonious, yet strong, 
And formed alike for eloquence and song, 
Give me the English, — aptest tongue to paint 
A sage or dunce, a villain or a saint, 
To spur the slothful, counsel the distressed, 
To lash the oppressor, and to soothe the oppressed, 
To lend fantastic Humor freest scope, 
To marshal all his laughter-moving troop, 
Give Pathos power, and Fancy lightest wings, 
And Wit his merriest whims and keenest stings ! 
18* 



418 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

LXXIX— MONODY ON SAMUEL PATCH. 

ROBERT C. SANDS. 

Toll for Sam Patch ! Sam Patch, who jumps no more, 

This or the world to come. Sam Patch is dead ! 
The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore 

Of dark futurity, he would not tread. 

No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed ; 
Nor with decorous woe, sedately stepp'd 

Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed ; — 
The mighty river, as it onward swept, 
In one great, wholesale sob, his body drown'd and kept. 

Sam was a fool. But the large world of such- 

Has thousands — better taught, alike absurd, 
And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much, 

Where distant cataracts spout, of him men heard. 

Alas for Sam ! Had he aright preferr'd 
The kindly element, to which he gave 

Himself so fearlessly, we had not heard 
That it was now his winding-sheet and grave, 
Nor sung 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for the brave 

Death or Victory 

Was his device, "and there was no mistake," 
Except his last ; and then he did but die, 

A blunder which the wisest men will make. 

Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, 
To stand, the target often thousand eyes, 

And down intu the coil and water-quake 
To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies — 
For this, all vulgar flights he ventured to despise. 

And while Niagara prolongs its thunder, 
Though still the rock primeval disappears, 

And nations change their bounds — the theme of wonder 
Shall Sam go down the cataract of lonj? years ; 

o raj' 

And if there be sublimity in tears. 
Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed 

When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears 
Lest by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, 
That he was all a hoax, and that his pluck had fled. 



THE WAR CROSS. 419 

But, ere he leap'd, he begg'd of those who made 

Money by his dread venture, that if he 
Should perish, such collection should be paid 

As might be pick'd up from the " company" 

To his mother. This, his last request, shall be — 
Though she who bore him ne'er his fate should know— 

An iris, glittering o'er his memory, 
When all the streams have worn their barriers low, 
And, by the sea drunk up, forever cease to flow. 

Therefore it is consider d, that Sam Patch 

Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme ; 
His name shall be a portion in the batch 

Of the heroic dough, which baking Time 

Kneads for consuming ages, — and the chime 
Of lame's old bells, long as they truly ring, 

Shall tell of him ; he dived tor the sublime, 
And found it. Thou, who with the eagle's wing, 
Being a goose, wouldst fly, — dream not of such a thing i 






LXXX.-— THE WAR CROSS. 

WALTER SCOTT. 

The cross, thus formed, he held on high, 
With wasted hand and haggard eye, 
And strange and mingled feelings woke, 
While his anathema he spoke. 
" Woe to the clansman who shall view 
This symbol of sepulchral yew, 
Forgetful that its branches grew 
Where weep the heavens their holiest dew 

On Alpine's dwelling low ! 
Deserter of his chieftain's trust, 
He ne'er shall mingle with their dust, 
But from his sires and kindred thrust, 
Each clansman's execration just 

Shall doom him wrath and woe." 
He paused — the word the vassals took, 
With forward step and fiery look, 
On high their native brands they shook, 
Their clattering targets wildiy strook ; 

And first, in murmur low, 



420 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Then, like the billow in his course, 
That far to seaward finds his source, 
And flings to shore his mustered force, 
Burst, with loud roar, their answer hoarse, 

" Woe to the traitor, woe !" 
Ben-an's gray scalp the accents knew, 
The joyous wolf from covert drew, 
The exulting eagle screamed afar — 
They knew the voice of Alpine's war. 



LXXXL— SOLILOQUY OF RICHARD III. 

SHAKSPKARE 

"Was ever woman in this humor woo'd ? 

Was ever woman in this humor won ? 

I'll have her, — but I will not keep her long. 

What ! I, that killed her husband, and his father, 

To take her in her heart's extremest hate ; 

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, 

The bleeding witness of her hatred by ; 

With God, her conscience, and these bars against me, 

And I no friends to back my suit withal 

But the plain devil and dissembling looks, 

And yet to win her, — all the world to nothing ! 

Ha! 

Hath she forgot already that brave prince, 

Edward, her lord, whom I some three months since, 

Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewksbury ? 

A sweeter, and a lovelier gentleman, — 

Framed in the prodigality of nature, 

Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right loyal, — 

The spacious world cannot again afford : 

And will she yet abase her eyes on me, 

That cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet prince, 

And made her widow to a woful bed ? 

On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety? 

On me, that halt, and am misshapen thus ? 

My dukedom to a beggarly denier, 

I do mistake my person all this while : 

Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot, 



MA THE W LEE. 421 

Myself to be a marvellous proper man. 
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, 
And entertain a score or two of tailors, 
To study fashions to adorn my body ; 
Since I am crept in favor with myself, 
I will maintain it with some little cost. 
But, first, I'll turn yon fellow in his grave ; 
And then return lamenting to my love. — 
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, 
That I may see my shadow as I pass. 



LXXXIL— MATHEW LEE. 

R. H. DANA. 

Who's sitting on that long, black ledge, 

Which makes so far out in the sea ; 
Feeling the kelp-weed on its edge ? 

Poor, idle Mathew Lee ! 
So weak and pale ? A year and little more, 
And bravely did he lord it round this shore ! 

And on the shingles now he sits, 

And rolls the pebbles 'neath his hands ; 

Now walks the beach ; then stops by ills, 
And scores the smooth, wet sands ; 

Then tries each cliff, and cove, and jut, that bounds 

The isle ; then home from many weary rounds. 

He views the ships that come and go, 

Looking so like to living things. 
! 'tis a proud and gallant show 

Of bright and broad-spread wings, 
Making it light around them as they keep 
Their course right onward through the unsounded deep 

And where the far-off sand-bars lift 

Their backs in long and narrow line 
The breakers shout, and leap, and shift, 

And send the sparkling brine 
Into the air ; then rush to mimic strife — 
Glad creatures of the sea, and full of life — ^- 



422 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

But not to Lee. He sits alone ; 

No fellowship or joy for him. 
Borne down by woe, he makes no moan, 

Though tears will sometimes dim 
That asking- eye. 0, how his worn thoughts crave- 
Not joy again, but rest within the grave. 

The rocks are dripping in the mist 

That lies so heavy off the shore ; 
Scarce seen the running breakers ; — list 

Their dull and smother'd roar ! 
Lee hearkens to their voice. — " I hear, I hear 
Your call. — Not yet ! — I know my time is near !" 

A sweet, low voice, in starry nights, 

Chants to his ear a plaining song ; 
Its tones come winding up the heights, 

Telling of woe and wrong ; 
And he must listen, till the stars grow dim, 
The song that gentle voice doth sing to him. 

In thick dark nights he'd take his seat 
High up the cliffs, and feel them shake, 

As swung the sea with heavy beat 
Below — and hear it break 

With savage roar, then pause and gather strength, 

And then, come tumbling in its swollen length. 

But he no more shall haunt the beach, 

Nor sit upon the tall cliff's crown, 
Nor go the round of all that reach, 

Nor feebly sit him down, 
Watching the swaying weeds ; — another day, 
And he'll have gone far hence that dreadful way. 



LXXXIIL— THE SEVEN AGES. 

SHAKSPKARE. 

All the world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players ; 
They have their exits, and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms : 



AMBITION. 423 

And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel, 

And shining morning i'acc, creeping like snail 

Unwillingly to school : And then, the lover ; 

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad 

Made to his mistress' eyebrow : Then, a soldier ; 

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, 

Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon's mouth : And then, the justice ; 

His fair round belly with good capon lin'd, 

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, 

Full of wise saws, and modern instances, 

And so he plays his part : The sixth age shifts 

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon ; 

With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ; 

His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide 

For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 

And whistles in his sound : Last scene of all 

That ends this strange eventful history, 

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion ; 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything 



LXXXIV.— AMBITION. 

N. P. WILLIS 

What is ambition ? 'Tis a glorious cheat ! 
Angels of light walk not so dazzlingly 
The sapphire walls of Heaven. The unsearch'd mine 
Hath not such gems. Earth's constellated thrones 
Have not such pomp of purple and of gold. 
It hath no features. In its face is set 
A mirror, and the gazer sees his own. 
It looks a god, but it is like himself/ 
It hath a mien of empery, and smiles 
Majestically sweet — but how like him ! 
It follows not with fortune. It is seen 
Rarely or never in the rich man's hall. 
It seeks the chamber of the gifted boy, 
And lifts his humble window, and comes in. 



42* THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

The narrow walls expand, and spread away 

Into a kingly palace, and the roof 

Lifts to the sky, and unseen fingers work 

The ceiling with rich blazonry, and write 

His name in burning letters over all. 

And ever, as he shuts his wilder'd eyes, 

The phantom comes and lays upon his lids 

A spell that murders sleep, and in his ear 

Whispers a deathless word, and on his brain 

Breathes a fierce thirst no water will allay. 

He is its slave henceforth ! His days are spent 

In chaining down his heart, and watching where 

To rise by human weakness. His nights 

Bring him no rest in all their blessed hours. 

His kindred are forgotten or estranged ; 

Unhealthful fires burn constant in his eye ; 

His lip grows restless, and its smile is curl'd 

Half to scorn — till the bright, fiery boy, 

That was a daily blessing but to see, 

His spirit was so bird-like and so pure, 

Is frozen, in the very flash of youth, 

Into a cold, care-fretted, heartless man ! 



LXXXV.^-THE CONTRAST. 

ALFRED B. STREET. 

A lake is slumbering in the wild- wood depths, 
Picturing naught upon its polish'd glass 
But the long stretching and contracting shades 
That change as change the hours : its sullen tones 
Blending but with the forest's daylight songs 
And midnight howlings o'er the leafy waste, 
Curls a light thread of smoke — a hunter's fire ; 
And 'mid the lilies' floating golden globes, 
Spangling the margin, where the ripples play 
And melt in the silver, rocks his bark canoe. 

A few years circle by. The talisman 

Of toil has waved above this forest-scene. 

Rich meadows, spotted with dense waving woods, 

Slope to the sun-lit surface of the lake, 



THE PILGRIM'S FUNERAL. 425 

Whose plashings mingle with the village-din, 
A rural low and bleat. Where curl'd that smoke, 
Glitter white walls, and cluster roofs of men, 
With terraced gardens, leaning to the wave, 
Religion rearing spires, and Learning domes, 
To the bright skies that arch this Eden-spot. 
The rude canoe has vanish'd, but swift keels 
Wave joyous o'er the smiling, sparkling flood 
That lies in calm obedience at the feet 
Of those that freed it from its dungeon-shades. 



LXXXVL— THE PILGRIM'S FUNERAL. 

JOHX H 

It was a wintry scene, 
The hills were whitened o'er, 
And the chill north- winds were blowing keen 
Along the rocky shore. 

Gone was the wood-bird's lay, 
That the summer forest fills, 
And the voice of the stream has pass'd away 
From its path among the hills. 

And the low sun coldly smil'd 
Through the boughs of the ancient wood, 
Where a hundred souls, sire, wife, and child 
Around a coffin stood. 

They raised it gently up, 
And, through the untrodden snow, 
They bore it along, with a solemn step, 
To a woody vale below. 

And grief was in each eye, 
As they moved towards the spot. 
And brief, low speech, and tear and sigh 
Told that a friend was not. 

When they laid his cold corpse low 
In its dark and narrow cell, 
Heavy the mingled earth and snow 
Upon his coffin fell. 



426 ' THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Weeping, they pass'd away, 
And left him there alone, 
With no mark to tell where their dead friend lay, 
But the mossy forest stone. 

When the winter storms were gone, 
And the strange birds sung around, 
Green grass and violets sprung upon 
That spot of holy ground. 

And o'er him giant trees 
Their proud arms toss'd on high, 
And rustled music in the breeze 
That wander' d through the sky. 

When these were overspread 
With the hues that Autumn gave, 
They bow'd them in the wind, and shed 
Their leaves upon his grave 

These woods are perish'd now, 
And that humble grave forgot, 
And the yeoman sings, as he drives his plough 
O'er that once sacred spot. 

Two centuries are flown 
Since they laid his cold corpse low, 
And his bones are moulder'd to dust, and strown 
To the breezes long ago. 

And they who laid them there, 
That sad and suffering train, 
Now sleep in dust, — to tell us where, 
No letter'd stones remain. 

Their memory remains, 
And ever shall remain, 
More lasting than the aged fanes 
Of Egypt's storied plain. 



MARCH. 427 



LXXXVIL— MARCH. 

ARTHUR C. COXK. 

March — march — march ! 

Making sounds as they tread, 
Ho-ho ! how they step, 

Going down to the dead ! 
Every stride, every tramp, 

Every footfall is nearer ; 
And dimmer each lamp, 

As darkness grows drearer ; 
But ho ! how they march, 

Making sounds as they tread ; 
But ho ! how they step, 

Going down to the dead ! 

March — march — march ! 

Making sounds as they tread, 
Ho-ho ! how they laugh, 

Going down to the dead ! 
How they whirl — how they trip, 

How they smile — how they dally, 
How blithesome they skip, 

Going down to the valley ; 
Oh-ho, how they march, 

Making sounds as they tread ; 
Ho-ho, how they skip, 

Going down to the dead ! 

March — march — march ! 

Earth groans as they tread ! 
Each carries a skull ; 

Going down to the dead ! 
Every stride — every stamp, 

Every footfall is bolder ; 
"lis a skeleton's tramp, 

With a skull on his shoulder ; 
But ho ! how he steps 

With a high-tossing head, 
That clay-cover'd bone, 

Going down to the dead. 



428 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

LXXXVIIL— THE LAST DAYS OF AUTUMN. 

JAMES G. PERCIVAI* 

Now the growing year is over, 
And the shepherd's tinkling bell 

Faintly from its winter cover 
Rings a low farewell : — 

Now the birds of Autumn shiver, 

Where the withered beach-leaves quiver, 

O'er the dark and lazy river, 
In the rocky dell. 

Now the mist is on the mountains, 

Reddening in the rising sun ; 
Now the flowers around the fountains 

Perish one by one : — 
Not a spire of grass is growing, 
But the leaves that late were glowing, 
Now its blighted green are strewing 

With a mantled dun 

Now the torrent brook is stealing 
Faintly down the furrow' d glade — 

Not as when in winter pealing, 
Such a din is made. 

That the sound of cataracts falling 

Gave no echo so appalling, 

As its hoarse and heavy brawling 
In the pine's black shade. 

Darkly blue the mist is hovering 

Round the clifted rock's bare height— 

All the bordering mountains covering 
With a dim, uncertain light : — 

Now, a fresher wind prevailing, 

Wide its heavy burden sailing, 

Deepens as the day is failing, 
Fast the gloom of night. 

Slow the blood-stain'd moon is riding 
Through the still and hazy air, 

Like a sheeted spectre gliding 
In a torch's glare : — 



MUSIC OF THE NIGHT. 429 

Few the hours, her light is given — 
Mingling clouds of tempest driven 
O'er the mourning face of heaven, 
All is blackness there. 



LXXXIX.— MUSIC OF THE NIGHT. 

JOHN NEAI.. 

There are harps that complain to the presence of night, 

To the presence of night alone — 

In a near and unchangeable tone — 
Like winds, full of sound, that go whispering bv, 
As if some immortal had stoop' d from the sky. 

And breathed out a blessing — and flown ! 

Yes ! harps that complain to the breezes of night, 

To the breezes of night alone ; 
Growing fainter and fainter, as ruddy and bright 
The sun rolls aloft in his drapery of light, 

Like a conqueror shaking his brilliant hair 

And flourishing robe, on the edge of the air ! 
Burning crimson and jrold 
On the clouds that unfold, 
Breaking onward in flame, while an ocean divides 
On his right and his left — So the Thunderer rides, 
When he cuts a bright path through the heaving tides, 

Rolling on, and erect, in a charioting throne ! 

Yes ! strings that lie still in the gushing of day, 
That awake, all alive, to the breezes of night. 
There are hautboys and flutes too, forever at play, 
When the evening is near, and the sun is away, 

Breathing out the still hymn of delight. 
These strings by invisible fingers are play'd — 

By spirits, unseen, and unknown, 
But thick as the stars, all this music is made ; 
«- And these flutes, alone, 

In one sweet dreamy tone, 

Are ever blown, 
Forever and forever. 



430 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

The livelong night ye hear the sound, 
Like distant waves flowing round 
In ringing caves, while heaven is sweet 
With crowding tunes, like halls 
Where fountain-music falls, 
And rival minstrels meet. 



XC.—MY MOTHER'S GRAVE. 

GEORGE D. TRENT1UB. 

The trembling dew-drops fall 
Upon the shutting flowers ; like souls at rest, 
The stars shine gloriously : and all 
Save me, are blest. 

Mother, I love thy grave ! 
The violet, with its blossoms blue and mild, 
Waves o'er thy head ; when shall it wave 
Above thy child ? 

'Tis a sweet flower, yet must 
Its bright leaves to the coming tempest bow ; 
Dear mother, 'tis thine emblem ; dust 
Is on thy brow. 

• 
And I could love to die : 
To leave % untasted life's dark, bitter streams — 
By thee, as erst in childhood, lie, 
And share thy dreams. 

And I must linger here, 
To stain the plumage of my sinless years, 
And mourn the hopes to childhood dear 
With bitter tears. 

Aye, I must linger here, 
A lonely branch upon a wither' d tree, 
Whose last frail leaf, untimely sere, 
Went down with thee ! 



"passing away." 431 

Oft, from life's wither' d bower, 
In still communion with the past, I turn, 
And muse on thee, the only flower 
In memory's urn. 

And, when the evening pale, 
Bows, like a mourner, on the dim, blue wave, 
I stray to hear the night- winds wail 
Around thy grave. 

"Where is thy spirit flown ? 
I gaze above — thy look is imaged there ; 
I listen — and thy gentle tone 
Is on the air. 

0, come, while here I press 
My brow upon thy grave ; and in those mild 
And thrilling tones of tenderness, 
Bless, bless thy child ! 

Yes, bless your weeping child ; 
And o'er thy urn — religion's holiest shrine — 
0. give his spirit, undefined, 
To blend with thine. 



XCL— "PASSING AWAY." 

JOHN PIERPONT. 

Was it the chime of a tiny bell, 

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, — 
Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell 

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear, 
AVhen the winds and the waves lie together asleep, 
And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep, 
She dispensing her silvery light, 
And he, his notes as silvery quite, 
While the boatman listens, and ships his oar. 
To catch the music that comes from the shore ? — 

Hark ! the notes, on my ear that play, 

Are set to words : — as they float, they say, 
" Passing away ! passing away !" 



432 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

But no ; it was not a fairy's shell, 

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear ; 
Nor was it the tongue of a silvery bell, 
Striking the hour, that fill'd my ear, 
As I lay in my dream ; yet was it a chime 
That told of the flow of the stream of time. 
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, 
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum swung ; 
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring 
That hangs in his cage, a Canary bird swing ;) 
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, 
And, as she enjoy'd it, she seem'd to say, 
" Passing away ! passing away !" 

0, how bright were the wheels, that told 

Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow ! 
And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, 

Seemed to point to the girl below. 
And lo ! she had changed ; — in a few short hours 
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, 
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung 
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung 
In the fulness of grace and womanly pride, 
That told me she was soon to be a bride ; — 
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, 
In the same sweet voice I heard her say, 
" Passing away ! passing away 1" 

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade 

Of thought, or care, stole softly over, 
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made, 

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover. 
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush 
Had something lost of its brilliant blush ; 
And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, 

That marched so calmly round above her, 
Was a little dimnrd, — as when evening steals 

Upon noon's hot face : Yet one couldn't but love her, 
For she looked like a mother, whose first babe lay 

Rock'd on her breast, as she swung all day ; — 

And she seem'd in the same silver tone to say, 
" Passing away ! passing away V 



SHAKSPEARE ODE. 433 

While yet T look'd, what a change there came ! 

Her eye was quench'd, and her cheek was wan : 
Stooping and starl'd was her wither'd frame, 

Yet. just as busily, swung she on ; 
The garland beneath her had fallen to dust ; 
The wheels above her were eaten with rust ; 
The hands, that over the dial swept, 
Grew crooked and tarnish'd, but on they kept, 
And still there came that silver tone 
From the shrivell'd lips of the toothless crone, — 

(Let me never forget till my dying day 

The tone or burden of her lay.) — 

" Passing away ! passing away !" 



XClx.— SHAKSPEARE ODE. 

CHARLES SPRAGUE. 



God of the glorious lyre ! 
Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang, 

While Jove's exulting choir 
Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang— 

Come ! bless the service and the shrine 

We consecrate to thee and thine. 

Fierce from the frozen north, 
When Havoc led his legions forth, 
O'er Learning's sunny groves the dark destroyer spread ' 
In dust the sacred statue slept, 
Fair Science round her altar wept, 
And Wisdom cowl'd his head. 

At length, Olympian lord of morn, 
The raven veil of night was torn, 

When, through golden clouds descending, 
Thou didst hold thy radiant flight, 

O'er Nature's lovely pageant bending, 
Till Avon rolled, all sparkling to thy sight ! 

There, on its bank, beneath the mulberry's shade, 
Wrapp'd in voung dreams, a wiid-eyed minstrel stray'd. 

19 



434 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Lighting there, and lingering long, 
Thou didst teach the bard his song ; 

Thy ringers strung his sleeping shell, 
And round his brow a garland curl'd ; 

On his lips thy spirit fell, 
And bade him wake and warm the world ! 

Then Shakspeare rose ! 
Across the trembling strings 
His daring hand he flings, 
And, lo ! a new creation glows ! 
There, clustering round, submissive to his will, 
Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfil. 

Madness, with his frightful scream, 
Vengeance, leaning on his lance, 
Avarice, with his blade and beam, 
Hatred, blasting with a glance ; 
Remorse, that weeps, and Rage, that roars, 
And Jealousy, that dotes, but dooms, and murders, yet adores. 

Mirth, his face with sunbeams lit, 

Waking Laughter's merry swell, 
Arm in arm, with fresh-eyed Wit, 
That waves his tingling lash, while Folly shakes his bell. 

Despair, that haunts the gurgling stream, 
Kiss'd by the virgin moon's cold beam, 
Where some lost maid wild chaplets wreathes, 
And, swan-like, there her own dirge breathes, 
Then, broken-hearted, sinks to rest, 
Beneath the buboling wave that shrouds her maniac breast 

Young love, with eye of tender gloom, 

JSTow drooping o'er the hallowed tomb 
Where his plighted victims lie — 
Where they met, but met to die : 

And now, when crimson buds are sleeping, 

Through the dewy arbor peeping, 
Where Beauty's child, the frowning world forgot, 

To youth's devoted tale is listening, 

Rapture on her dark lash glistening, [spot 

While fairies leave their cowslip cells and guard the happy 



DESTRUCTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 435 



XCIIL— THE IVY AND THE WINE. 

PHILIP J. BAILEY. 

Well might the thoughtful race of old 

With ivy twine the head 
Of him they hail'd their god of wine, — 

Thank (rod ! the lie is dead : 
For ivy climbs the crumbling hall 

To decorate decay, 
And spreads its dark, deceitful pail 

To hide what wastes away. 
And wine will circle round the brain- 
As ivy o'er the brow, 
Till what could once see far as stars 

Is dark as death's eye now. 
Then dash* the cup down ! 'tis not worth 

A soul's great sacrifice : 
The wine will sink into the earth, 

The soul, the soul, — must rise. 



XCIV.— DESTRUCTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 

PHILIP J. BAILEf. 

'Tis earth shall lead destruction ; she shall end. 
The stars shall wonder why she comes no more 
On her accustomed orbit, and the sun 
Miss one of his eleven of light ; the moon, 
An orphan orb, shall seek for earth for aye, 
Through time's untrodden depths, and find her not ; 
No more shall morn, out of the holy east, 
Stream o'er the amber air her level light ; 
Nor evening, with the spectral fingers, draw 
Her star-sprent curtain round the head of earth ; 
Her footsteps never thence again shall grace 
The blue sublime of heaven. Her grave is dug. 
I see the stars, night-clad, all gathering 
In long and dark procession. Death's at work. 
And, one by one, shall all yon wandering worlds, 



436 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

Whether in orbed path they roll, or trail, 
In an inestimable length of light, 
Their golden train of tresses after them, 
Cease ; and the sun, centre and sire of light, 
The keystone of the world-built arch of heaven, 
Be left in burning solitude. The stars, 
Which stood as thick as dew-drops on the fields 
Of heaven, and all they comprehend shall pass. 
The spirits of all worlds shall all depart 
To their great destinies. 



XCV.— MAZEPPA. 

BYROK. 

' Bring forth the horse !' — the horse was brought ; 

In truth he was a noble steed, 

A Tartar of the Ukraine breed, 
Who leok'd as though the speed of thought 
Were in his limbs ; but he was wild, 

Wild as the wild deer, and untaught, 
With spur and bridle undefiled — 

'Twas but a day he had been caught ; 
And snorting, with erected mane, 
And struggling fiercely, but in vain, 
In the full foam of wrath and dread 
To me the desert-born was led : 
They bound me on, that menial throng, 
Upon his back with many a thong ; 
Then loosed him with a sudden lash — 
Away ! — away ! — and on we dash ! — 
Torrents less rapid and less rash. 

Away ! — away ! — My breath was gone — 
I saw not where he hurried on : 
'Twas scarcely yet the break of day, 
And on he foam'd — away ! — away ! — 
The last of human sounds which rose, 
As I was darted from my foes, 
Was the wild shout of savage laughter, 
Which on the wind came roaring after 



MAZEPPA. 437 

A moment from that rabble rout : 

With sudden wrath I wrenched my head, 

And snapp'd the cord, which to the mane 

Had bound my neck in lieu of rein, 
And, writhing half my form about, 
Hovvl'd back my curse, but 'midst the tread, 
The thunder of my courser's speed, 
Perchance they did not hear nor heed : 
It vexes me — for I would fain 
Have paid their insult back again. 
I paid it well in after days : 
There is not of that castle-sate, 
Its drawbridge and portcullis' weight, 
Stone bar, moat, bridge, or barrier left ; 
Nor of its fields a blade of grass, 

Save Avhat grows on a ridge of wall, 

Where stood the hearth-stone of the -hail : 
And many a time ye there might pass, 
Nor dream that e'er that fortress was : 
I saw its turrets in a blaze, 
Their crackling battlements all cleft, 

And the hot lead pour down like rain 
From off the scorch'd and blackening roof, 
Whose thickness was not vengeance-proof. 

They little thought that day of pain, 
When launch'd, as on the lightning's flash, 
They bade me to destruction dash, 

That one day I should come again, 
With twice five thousand horse, to thank 

The Count for his uncourteous ride. 
They play'd me then a bitter prank, 

When, with the wild horse for my guide, 
They bound me to his foaming flank : 
At length I play'd them one as frank — 
For time at last sets all things even — 

And if we do but watch the hour, 

There never yet was human power 
Which could evade, if unforgiven, 
The patient search and vigil long 
Of him who treasures up a wrong. 



438 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 



XCVL— UNIVERSALITY OF POETRY. 
/ 

JAMES G. PERCIVAL 

The world is full of poetry — the air 
Is living with its spirit; and the waves 
Dance to the music of its melodies, 
And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veil'd, 
And mantled with its beauty ; and the walls, 
That close the universe with crystal in, 
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim 
The unseen glories of immensity, 
In harmonies, too perfect, and too high, 
For aught but beings of celestial mould, 
And speak to man in one eternal hymn, 
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power. 

The year 1 ads round the seasons in a choir 
Forever charming, and forever new, 
Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay, 
The mournful, and the tender, in one strain, 
Which steals into the heart, like sounds, that rise 
Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore 
Of the wide ocean, resting after storms ; 
Or tones, that wind around the vaulted roof, 
And pointed arches, and retiring aisles 
Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand, 
Skilful, and moved, with passionate love of art, 
Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft 
The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls, 
•By mellow touches, from the softer tubes, 
Voices of melting tenderness that blend 
With pure and gentle musings, till the soul, 
Commingling with the melody, is borne, 
Rapt, and dissolved in ecstacy, to heaven. 



XOVIL— GREECE. 

He who hath bent him o'er the dead, 
Ere the first day of death is fled, 
The first dark day of nothingness, 
The last of danger and distress, 



FAME. 43ft 

(Before decay's effacing fingers 

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,) 

And mark'd the mild angelic air, 

The rapture of repose that's there, 

The fix'd, yet tender traits that streak 

The languor of the placid cheek, 

And — but for that sad shrouded eye 

That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, 

And but for that chill, changeless brow, 
Where cold obstruction's apathy, 
Appals the gazing mourner's heart, 
As if to him it could impart 
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon ; 
Yes, but for these, and these alone, 
Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour 
He still might doubt the tyrant's power ; 
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd, 
The first, last look by death reveal' d ! 
Such is the aspect of this shore ; 
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more ! 
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, 
We start, for soul is wanting there. 
Hers is the loveliness in death, 
That parts not quite with parting breath ; 
But beauty with that fearful bloom, 
That hue which haunts it to the tomb, 

Expression's last receding ray, 

A gilded halo hovering round decay, 

The farewell beam of feeling past away ! 
Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, 
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth f 



XCVIIL— FAME. 

What is the end of fame ? 'tis but to fill 
A certain portion of uncertain paper ; 

Some liken it to climbing up a hill, 

Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapor ; 



440 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill ; 

And bards burn what they call their " midnight taper" 
To have, when the original is dust, 
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. 

What are the hopes of man ? old Egypt's king, 

Cheops, erected the first pyramid 
And largest, thinking it was just the thing 

To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid ; 
But somebody or other, rummaging, 

Burglariously broke his coffin's lid. 
Let not a monument give you or me hopes, 
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops. 



XCIX— FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY. 

THOMAS HOOD. 

Ben Battle was a soldier bold, 

And used to war's alarms : 
But a cannon-ball took off his legs, 

So he laid down his arms ! 

Now as they bore him off the field, 

Said he, "Let others shoot, 
For here I leave my second leg, 

And the Forty-second Foot !" 

The army surgeons made him limbs : 

Said he, — " They're only pegs : 
But there's as wooden members quite, 

As represent my legs !" 

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid, 

Her name was N lly Gray ; 
So he went to pay her his devoirs, 

When he'd devoured his pay ! 

But when he called on Nelly Gray, 

She made him quite a scoff, 
And when she saw his wooden legs ; 

Began to take them off' 



THE HAT REGAINED 44i 

M 0, Nelly Gray ! 0, Nelly Gray ! 

Is this your love so warm ? 
The love that loves a scarlet coat, 

Should be more uniform !" 

Said she, " T loved a soldier once, 

For he was blithe and brave ; 
But I shall never have a man 

With both legs in the grave ! 

" Before you had these timber toes, 

Your love I did allow, 
But then, you know, you stand upon 

Another footing now !" 

" 0, false and fickle Nelly Gray ; 

I know why you refuse : — 
Though I've no feet — some other man 

Is standing in my shoes ! 

u I wish I ne'er had seen your face ; 

But, now, a long farewell ! 
For you will be my death ; — alas ! 

You will not be my Nell /" 

Now when he went from Nelly Gray, 

His heart so heavy got, 
And life was such a burden grown, 

It made him take a knot ! 

So round his melancholy neck, 

A rope he did entwine, 
And, for his second time in life, 

Enlisted in the Line ! 



C— THE HAT REGAINED. 

REJECTED ADDRESSES 

Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat, 
But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat : 
Down from the gallery the beaver flew, 
And spurned the one to settle in the two. 
19* 



442 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

How shall he act ? Pay at the gallery door 

Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four? 

Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait, 

And gain his hat again at half-past eight ? 

Now, while his fears anticipate a thief, 

John Mullins whispers, " Take my handkerchief." 

" Thank you," cries Pat ; " but one won't make a line." 

" Take mine," cried Wilson ; and cried Stokes, " Take mine." 

A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, 

Where Spitalfields with real India vies. 

Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clue, 

Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue. 

Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. 

George Green below, with palpitating hand, 

Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band — 

Up soars the prize ! The youth with joy unfeigned, 

Regained the felt, and felt what he regained. 

While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat 

Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat. 



CI.— CAPTURE OF THE ALHAMBRA. 

ANONYMOUS. 

Why need I tell of the affray, 

The dreadful deeds of that famed day ; 

Of the bright field o'erspread 
With the down-trodden knights and grooms, 
Helms, turbans, spears, and dripping plumes, 

The dying and the dead. 
Of Spain's loud war-note rising o'er 
The wild, shrill lelics of the Moor, 

Of wail and feeble moan, 
Of shout that loud of triumph told, 
Of taunting laugh and fiend-like yell, 

And curse, and stifled groan : 
Crescent, and Cross, and banner rent, 
Lance, scimitar together blent, 

Of ringing plate and steel, 
Of splintered corselet, battered casque, 
Of those that scorned their lives to ask, 

Beat down by hoof and heel. 



THE SEER. 44* 

Upon the tottering walls of strife, 
Christian and Moslem, life for life, 

Vengeance for vengeance due. 
Of woman's shriek and startling cry, 
Rising and blending fearfully 
With oath and imprecation high, 

The din of battle through ; 
While shattered tower gave back again 
The echo of each warlike strain, 
11 Strike for Castile ! St. James for Spain !" 

" Allah ! il Allah, hu !" 
Of deadly thrusts, and rain-like blows, 
Of steeds without their riders, those 

Unheeded left to die ; 
Of death-cold brow and deep gashed breast, 
A bloody scarf and dented crest, 

Blanched lip and glassy eye ! 
Why tell of these ; enough to say, 
For Ferdinand 'twas a glorious day : 
The Moor was conquered in the fight ; 
The Christian banner waved that night 
Above the city's lofty walls ; 
The Spaniard trod the Alhambra halls ; 
The biow was struck, the deed was done, 
Grenada from the Moslem won. 



OIL— THE SEER. 

J. O. WHITTIEO. 

I hear the far-off voyager's horn, 

I see the Yankee's trail ; 
His foot on every mountain pass, 

On every stream his sail. 
He's whittling round St. Mary's falls.. 

Upon his loaded wain ; 
He's leaving on the pictured rocks 

His fresh tobacco stain. 

I hear the mattock in the mine, 

The axe stroke in the dell, 
The clamor from the Indian lodge, 

The Jesuit's chapel bell. 



444 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

I see the swarthy trappers come 
From Mississippi's springs ; 

The war-chiefs with their painted bows, 
And crest of eagle wings. 

Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, 

The steamer smokes and raves ; 
And city lots are staked for sale 

Above old Indian graves. 
By forest, lake, and waterfall, 

I see the pedlar's show — 
The mighty mingling with the mean, 

The lofty with the low. 

I hear the tread of pioneers 

Of nations yet to be ; 
The first low wash of waves that soon 

Shall roll a human sea. 

The rudiments of empire here 

Are plastic yet and warm ; 
The chaos of a mighty world 

Is rounding into form. 
Each rude and jostling fragment soon 

Its fitting place shall find — 
The raw material of a State, 

Its music and its mind. 

And western still, the star, which leads 

The New World in its train, 
Has tipped with fire the icy spears 

Of many a mountain-chain. 
The snowy cones of Oregon 

Are kindled on its way ; 
And California's golden sands 

Gleam brighter in its ray 



CIIL— EVENING. 

JAMES K. PAULDING. 

'Twas sunset's hallow'd time — and such an eve 
Might almost tempt an angel heaven to leave. 
Never did brighter glories greet the eye, 
Low in the warm and ruddy western sky : 



EVENING. 445 

Nor the light clouds at summer eve unfold 

More varied tints of purple, red, and gold. 

Some in the pure, translucent, liquid breast 

Of crystal lake, fast anchor' d seem'd to rest, 

Like golden islets scatter'd far and wide, 

By elfin skill in fancy's fabled tide, 

Where, as wild eastern legends idly feign, 

Fairy, or genii, hold despotic reign. 

Others, like vessels gilt with burnished gold, 

Their flitting, airy way are seen to hold, 

All gallantly equipp'd with streamers gay, 

While hands unseen, or chance directs their way ; 

Around, athwart, the pure ethereal tide, 

With swelling purple sail, they rapid glide, 

Gay as the bark where Egypt's wanton queen 

Reclining on the deck was seen, 

At which as gazed the uxoriuus Roman fool, 

The subject world slipped from his dotard rule. 

Anon, the gorgeous scene begins to fade, 

And deeper hues the ruddy skies invade ; 

The haze of gathering twilight nature shrouds, 

And pale, and paler wax the changeful clouds. 

Then sunk the breeze into a breathless calm ; 

The silent dews of evening dropp'd like balm ; 

The hungry night-hawk from his lone haunt hies, 

To chase the viewless insect through the skies ; 

The bat began his lantern-loving flight, 

The lonely whip-poor-will, our bird of night, 

Ever unseen, yet ever seeming near, 

His shrill note quaver' d in the startled ear ; 

The buzzing beetle forth did gaily hie, 

With idle hum, and careless, blundering eye ; 

The little trusty watchman of pale night, 

The firefly, trimm'd anew his lamp so bright, 

And took his merry airy circuit round 

The sparkling meadow's green and fragrant bound, 

Where blossom'd clover, bathed in palmy dew t 

In fair luxuriance, sweetly blushing grew. 



446 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

CIV.— MANFRED'S SOLILOQUY. 

BYRON. 

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops 
Of the snow-shining mountains. — Beautiful ! 
I linger yet with Nature, for the night 
Hath been to me a more familiar face 
Than that of man : and in her starry shade 
Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
I learn'd the language of another world. 
I do remember me, that in my youth, 
When I was wandering, — upon such a night 
I stood within the Coliseum's wall, 
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome ; 
The trees which grew along the broken arches 
Waved dark in the bine midnight, and the stars 
Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar 
The watch-dog bay'd beyond the Tiber ; and 
More near from out the Caesars' palace came 
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, 
Of distant sentinels the fitful song 
Begun and died upon the gentle wind. 
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach 
Appear'd to skirt the horizou, yet they stood 
Within a bowshot — Where the Caesars dwelt, 
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst 
A grove which springs through levell'd battlements, 
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths, 
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth ; — 
But the gladiator's bloody Circus stands, 
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection ! 
While Caesars' chambers and the Augustan halls, 
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. — 
And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon 
All this, and cast a wide and tender light, 
Which soften'd down the hoar austerity 
Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up, 
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries, 
Leaving that beautiful which still was so, 
And making that which was not, till the place 
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er 
With silent worship of the great of old ! — 
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns. — 



I'HE GUERILLA. 447 



CV.—THE MOONLIGHT MARCH. 

I see them on their winding way, 
About their ranks the moonbeams play ; 
Their lofty deeds and daring high 
Blend with the notes of victory. 
And waving arms, and banners bright, 
Are glancing in the mellow light : 
They're lost and crone, the moon is past, 
The wood's dark shade is o'er them cast ; 
And fainter, fainter, fainter still 
The march is rising o'er the hill. 

Again, again, the pealing drum, 
The clashing horn — they come, they come ; 
Through rocky pass, o'er wooded steep 
In long and glittering files they sweep. 
And iwwer, nearer, yet more near, 
Their softened chorus meets the ear ; 
Forth, forth, and meet them on their way , 
The trampling hoofs hrook no delay ; 
With thrilling fife and pealing drum, 
And clashing horn, thev come, they come. 



C VI.— THE GUERILLA 

JOHN G. C. BRAIXAR* 

Though friends are false, and leaders fail, 

And rulers quake with fear ; 
Though tamed the shepherd in the vale, 

Though slain the mountaineer ; 
Though Spanish beauty fill their arms, 

And Spanish gold their purse — 
Sterner than wealth's or war's alarms 

Is the w»ld Guerilla's course. 

No trumpets range us to the fight 

No signal sound of drum 
Tells to the foe, that, in their might, 

The hostile squadrons come 



448 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

No sunbeam glitters on our spears, 
No warlike tramp of steeds 

Gives warning — for the first that hears 
Shall be the first that bleeds. 

The night-breeze calls us from our bed, 

At dew-fall forms the line, 
And darkness gives the signal dread 

That makes our ranks combine : 
Or should some straggling moonbeam lie 

On copse or lurking hedge, 
'T would flash but, from a Spaniard's eye, 

Or from a dagger's edge. 

} Tis clear in the sweet vale below, 

And misty on the hill ; 
The skies shine mildly on our foo, 

But lour upon us still. 
This gathering storm shall quickly burst 

And spread its terrors far, 
And at its front we'll be the first, 

And with it go to war. 



CVIL— I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER. 

THOMAS HOOD 

I remember, I remember, 
The house where I was born, 
The little window where the sun 
Came peeping in at morn ; 
He never came a wink too soon, 
Nor brought too long a day, 
But now 1 often wish the night 
Had borne my breath away ! 

I remember, I remember, 
The roses, red and white, 
The violets, and the lily-cups, 
Those flowers made of light ! 



EARTH'S ANGELS. 449 

The lilacs where the robin built, 
And where my brother set 
The liburnam on his birth-day — 
The tree is living yet ! 

I remember, I remember, 

When I was used to swing, 

And thought the air must rush as fresh 

To swallows on the wing ; 

My spirit flew in leathers then, 

That is so heavy now, 

And summer pools could hardly cool 

The fever on my brow ! 

I remember, I remember, 

The fir-trees dark and high ; 

I used to think their slender tops 

Were close against the sky : 

It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 'tis little joy 

To know I'm farther off from heaven 

Than when I was a boy. 



CVIIL— EARTH'S ANGELS. 

ANONYMOUS, 

Why come not spirits from the realms of glory, 

To visit earth as in days of old ? 
The times of sacred writ, and ancient story ; 

Is heaven more distant, or is earth more cold ? 

Oft have I watched, when sunset clouds, receding, 
Waved like rich banners of a host gone by. 

To catch the gleam of some white pinion speeding 
Along the confines of the glowing sky. 

And oft, when midnight stars, in distant dullness, 
Were calmly burning, listened late and long : 

But nature's pulse beat on, with solemn stillness. 
Bearing no echo of the seraph's song. 



4 50 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

To Bethlehem's air was their last anthem given, 
When other stars before that One grew dim ? 

Was their last presence known in Peter's prison ? 
Or where exulting martyrs raised the hymn ? 

And are they all within their veil departed ? 

There gleams no wing along the empyrean now ; 
And many a tear from human eyes has started, 

Since angei touch has calmed a mortal brow 

Yet earth has angels, though their forms are moulded 
But of such clay as fashions all below — 

Though harps are wanted, and bright pinions folded, 
We know them by the love-light on their brow. 

i have seen angels by the sick one's pillow — 

Theirs was the soft tone and the soundless tread — 

Where smitten hearts were drooping like the willow, 
They stood between the living and the dead. 

And if my sight, by earthly dimness hindered, 

Beheld no hovering cherubim in air, 
[ doubt not, for their spirits knew their kindred, 

They smiled upon the wingless watchers there. 

There have been angels in the gloomy prison — 
In crowded halls — by the lone widow's hearth ; 

And where they passed, the fallen have uprisen — 
The giddy paused, the mourner's hope had birth. 

1 have seen one, whose eloquence commanding 
Housed the rich echoes of the human breast ; 

The blandishment of ease and wealth withstanding, 
That hope might reach the suffering and opprest. 

And by his side there moved a form of beauty, 
Strewing sweet flowers along his path of life, 

And, looking up with meek and love-lent duty ; 
I called her angel, and he called her wife. 

Oh, many a spirit walks the earth unheeded, 
That, when the veil of sadness is laid down, 

Shall soar aloft, with pinions unimpeded, 
And wear its glory like a starry crown. 



ADDRESS TO SPAIN. 451 



CIX.— ADDRESS TO SPAIN. 

BTRON, 

Awake, ye sons of Spain ! awake ! advance ! 
Lo ! Chivalry, your ancient goddess, cries ; 
But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance, 
Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies : 
Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flics, 
And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar: 
In every peal she calls — " Awake ! arise !" 
Say is her voice more feeble than of yore, 
When her war-song was heard on Andalusia's shore ? 

Hark ! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note ? 
Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath ? 
Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote ; 
Nor saved your brethren eie they sank beneath 
Tyrants and tyrants' slaves ? the fires of death, 
The bale-fires flash on high : — from rock to rock 
Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe, 
Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc, 
Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock 

Lo ! where the Giant on the mountain stands, 
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun, 
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, 
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon ; 
Restless it rolls, now fix'd, now anon 
Flashing afar, — and at his iron feet 
Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done ; 
For on this morn three potent nations meet, 
To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet 

Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice ; 
Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high ; 
Three gaudy standards float the pale blue skies ; 
The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! 
The foe, the victim, and the fond ally 
That fights for all, but ever fights in vain, 
Are met — as if at home they could not die — 
To feed the crow on Talavera's plain, 
And fertilize the field that each pretends to gain. 



452 THE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 

There shall they rot — Ambition's honor'd fools ! 
Yes, Honor decks the turf that wraps their clay ! 
Vain sophistry ! in these behold the tools, 
The broken tools, that tyrants cast away 
By myriads, when they dare to pave their way 
With human hearts — to what ? — a dream alone. 
Can despots compass aught that hails their sway ? 
Or call with truth one span of earth their own, 
Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone 



THE END. 



Young Foiks' Physiology. 



OUR BODIES, AND HOW WE LIVE. 



BY 



ALBERT F. BLAISDELL, M.D. 

A Text-Book of Physiology and Hygiene, written with Special 

Reference to the Effects of Stimulants and 

Narcotics on the Human System. 



The above book is designed for a text-book in Grammar 
Grades. Written by a life-long educator, it has taken front 
rank among the text-books that have been published in this 
branch of study. It is a Health-Book, and contains hundreds 
of suggestions in the department of Hygiene which cannot fail 
to be of life-benefit to the pupils. 

" The author has executed a difficult task in such a manner as to do him- 
self credit, and to make himself friends among those who are so fortunate as 
to use the book." — Professor C. C. Rounds, Principal State Normal 
School, Plymouth, N.H. 

"I have looked Our Bodies through with care, and have come to the 
conclusion that it will prove a very practical, useful book for the school- 
room. The chapter on practical experiments is especially valuable." — Pro- 
fessor D. B. Hagar, Principal State Normal School, Salem, Mans. 

" It comes right to the point, and treats of the human body briefly, but 
clearly." — L. H. Meader, Principal of High School, Warren, R.I. 

"I am greatly pleased with Dr. Blaisdell's choice little book, Our Bodies. 
It is throughout accurate and attractive, sensible and practical." — Rev. B. P. 
Snow, Superintendent of Schools, Biddeford, Me. 

" It is a fine, practical work, and will meet the wants of our grammar 
schools. The treatment of food, and the teachings in regard to alcohoiic 
drinks, must commend it to general favor." — A. D. Miner, Superintendent 
of Schools, North Adams, Mass. 



285 pages, fully ill ustra te d. Pric e 60 cents net 



Send for specimen pages, gratis. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 

16 



PHYSIOLOGY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 



Teach the Children How to Care for their Health! 

DR. BLAISDBLL'S ELEMENTARY PHYSIOLOGY, 

HOW TO KEEP WELL. 

SHOWING IN EACH DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT THE EFFECTS OF 

ALCOHOLIC DRINKS, STIMULANTS, AND NARCOTICS 

ON 

THE HUMAN SYSTEM, 

WITH SCIENTIFIC FOKCE, ACCURACY, AND CANDOR. 



This book is entirely new, and its leading purpose is to 
treat of the 

CARE AND PRESERVATION OF THE HEALTH. 



As a Health-Book it is replete with "hints and helps" 
regarding simple matters of e very-day health, with which 
every boy and girl should early become familiar. 

School officers who wish to adopt a book that will return 
a hundred-fold its cost, in "health suggestions " alone, to 
every pupil who uses them, should examine this work. 

The book contains some two hundred pages, and will well 
repay an examination. 



Price 42 cents net. 



Send for specimen pages, gratis. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston, 

17 



( A MODEL OF GOOD SENSE. 



LESSONS ON MANNERS. 

A LITTLE WORK WHICH IS ATTRACTING MUCH 

ATTENTION WHEREVER ITS MERITS 

HAVE BECOME KNOWN. 



Price 30 cents net. 



Good manners, like good morals, are best taught by example; 
but definite lessons, in which this most important subject can be 
considered in its appropriate divisions, are of great value, if we 
would have our children attain to " that finest of the fine arts, a 
beautiful behavior." Each lesson is preceded by a diagram for 
blackboard exercises, and the book is pronounced by our promi- 
nent educators complete in every particular. 



Manners in General. 
Manners at School. 
Manners on the Street. 
Manners at Home. 
Manners toward the Aged. 
Manners at the Table. 



Manners in Society. 

Manners at Church. 

Manners at Places of Amusement. 

Manners in Stores. 

Manners in Trauelling. 

Manners in Borrowing. 



From George A. Walton, Agent Massachusetts State Board of Educa- 
tion. — " The book must prove a great help to teachers and a blessing to 
the children." 

From Professor D. B. Ha gar, Principal of State Xormal School, Salem, 
Mass. — "I am sure that the book in the hands of teachers cannot fail to 
be highly useful." 

From Francis Cogswell, Superintendent of Schools. Cambridge, Mass. — 
•' It should be in every home, and on every list of reading for schools." 

From Thomas Tash, Superintendent of Schools, Portland. Me. — "I shall 
recommend it at once for my own schools." 

From A. J. Phipps, Superintendent of Schools, Lewiston. Me. — "It is an 
interesting, practical work, on a subject that should receive much more 
attention in schools, both public and private." 

The book will be mailed for examination to any address upon 
receipt of the introductory price, 25 cents. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 

14 



"WHAT INTERESTS IS REMEMBERED." 



YOUNG FOLKS' 

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 



PRICE SI .20 NET. 



An intensely interesting narrative of the discovery, settle- 
ment, and growth of our country. 

A prominent teacher writes us, — 

"I have used Higginson's 'Young Folks' History of the United States' 
ever since its first appearance, and I am satisfied that it is the best text-book 
on the subject that has ever been printed. 

" I have never yet seen a pupil that found it tiresome, nor has any pupil 
asked to be allowed to drop the study of history since we began to use it. 
Could more be said in favor of a text-book? " 

Another says, — 

"We have used Higginson's 'Young Folks' History ' for some time with 
satisfaction. The style is so interesting, that the study becomes a pleasure; 
and pupils are led to read the heavier works by the thirst engendered by the 
study of this book." 

Another, — 

" We have used Higginson's 'Young Folks' History of the United States' 
in our grammar schools for some time, and with very satisfactory results. 

" The pupils readily obtain a good knowledge of the history of our 
country by using this valuable work as the text-book." 

Another, — 

"We like your Higginson's 'History' for cur grammar schools very 
much. It meets our expectations fully, and I assure you our anticipations 
were not light." 

It is in use in thousands of schools all over the country. It 
has heen adopted as the text-book in United-States History for 
all the Grammar Schools of the city of Boston. It has also 
been adopted for use in the public schools in New York, 
Brooklyn, Jersey City, Newark, Paterson, Pitts- 
burgh, and cities and towns in every part of the country. 

Copies furnished for examination to teachers on receipt of 
price; and, if the book is adopted, the amount will be refunded, 
or book may be returned if not wanted. 

Send for specimen pages, gratis. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston 

18 



THE FOLLOWING BOOKS 

tend to create a love for Literature as a means of Culture. 



underwood's 
Handbooks of English Literature, 

BRITISH AUTHORS. 

Intended for High Schools, Academies, and Colleges, and as a Companion 
and Guide for Private Students, and for General Reading. By Francis 
H. Underwood, A.M. Cloth, $2.00 net. 

"I take great pleasure in expressing my hearty approval of it, both as re- 
spects the plan and the execution. It seems to me to be admirably adapted 
to meet a felt want in the department of education to which it belongs, — a 
department of the highest importance, but one very much neglected in the 
seminaries, and even in the higher literary institutions of our country." — 
Rev. John Wilson, A.M., President of Wesleya?i Female College] Wil- 
mington, Del. 

" I am so well pleased with it, that I have just put it into the hands of a 
class of thirty. I have examined Avith care every book of this class, and am 
satisfied that Professor Underwood's surpasses all similar books in the 
beauty, appositeness, and value of its selections." — Professor A. B. Stark, 
Principal of Corona Academy, Lebanon, Tenn. 



AMERICAN AUTHORS. 

Intended for the use of High Schools, Academies, and Colleges, and as a 
Companion and Guide for Private Students and for General Readers. By 
Francis H. Underwood, A.M. Svo. Cloth, $2.00 net. 

" The present volume, containing nearly six hundred and fifty pages, opens 
with an historical introduction, which is followed by an alphabetical list of 
American writers not included in the collection. Then come carefully 
selected extracts from over a hundred and fifty American authors, with 
short biographical and critical notices prefixed to most of them. 

" It is the best manual of the kind with which we have acquaintance : in- 
deed, we do not know of any other which occupies exactly the same field. 
The examination of its well-filled pages will bring to many a new revelation 
of the real richness and variety of our young and vigorous literature." — 
Boston Journal. 

" I consider ■ Underwood's American Authors ' the best book of the kind. 
. . . I use it constantly in my classes." — Austin George, Professor of 
English Literature, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Mich. 



Special Rates for Introduction. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 

21 



"PIONEER OF SUPPLEMENTARY READING." 



GRADED SUPPLEMENTARY READERS. 

PREPARED FOR USE IN THE LOWER GRADES BY 

PROF. BENJAMIN E\ TWEED, 
Late Supervisor of Boston Schools. 



Ncs. 1, 4, 7, and 10, First Year Primary. 

Nos. 2, 5, 8, and 11, Second Year Primary. 

Nos. 3, 6, 9, and 12, Third Year Primary. 

In brown-paper covers, 4 cents each net. 



Twenty-four pages in each number. Fully illustrated. 



The necessity for fresh reading-matter adapted to the capacity of the sev 
eral classes in the primary schools, has created such a demand for carefully 
selected and graded reading, that we some time since brought out the above 
little books. They are prepared by Professor Tweed, who has had a large 
experience in primary-school work, and knows its wants. The demand for 
these books has been extensive, and they are to-day in use in schools all over 
the country. 

The low price at which we furnish them leads school-boards to look most 
favorably toward them as a ready means of supplying, at little expense, a 
want which all admit exists. 

The above are now also bound in stiff board covers as follows : — 

First Year contains Nos. 1, 4, 7, and 10 . . 20 cents net. 
Second Year contains Nos. 2, 5, 8, and 11 . 20 cents net. 
Third Year contains Nos. 3, 6, 9, and 12 . . 20 cents net. 

These books will well repay an examination. In ordering, one needs to be 
particular to designate the kind wanted, to prevent mistakes. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 

3 



STANDARD ELOCUTIONARY BOOKS. 



FIVE-MINUTE DECLAMATIONS. Selected and adapted by 
"Walter K. Fobes, teacher of elocution and public reader; author 
of " Elocution Simplified." Cloth. 50 cents. 

FIVE-MINUTE RECITATIONS. By Walter K. Fobes. Cloth 

50 cents. 
Pupils in public schools on declamation days are limited to five minute* 
each for the delivery of " pieces." There is a great complaint of the scarcity 
of material for such a purpose, while the injudicious pruning of eloquent 
extracts has often marred the desired effects. To obviate these difficulties, 
new " Five-Minute " books have been prepared by a competent teacher. 
ELOCUTION SIMPLIFIED. With an appendix on Lisping, Stam 

mering, and other Impediments of Speech. By Walter K. Fobes ; 

graduate of the " Boston School of Oratory." 16mo. Cloth. 50 cents 

Paper, 30 cents. 
" The whole art of elocution is succinctly set forth in this small volume 
which might be judiciously included among the text-books of schools." — 
New Orleans Picayune. 

ADVANCED READINGS AND RECITATIONS. By Austin 
B. Fletcher, A.M., LL.B., Professor of Oratory, Brown University, 
and Boston University School of Law. This book has been already 
adopted in a large number of Universities, Colleges, Post-graduate 
Schools of Law and Theology, Seminaries, etc. 12mo. Cloth. SI. 50. 
"Professor Fletcher's noteworthy compilation has been made with rare 
rhetorical judgment, and evinces a sympathy for the best forms of litera- 
ture, adapted to attract readers and speakers, and mould their literary taste." 
— Prof. J. W. Churchill, Andorer Theological Seminary. 
THE COLUMBIAN SPEAKER. Consisting of choice and ani- 
mated pieces for declamation and reading. By Loomis J. Campbell, 
and Orix Root, Jun. 16mo. Cloth. 75 cents. 
Mr. Campbell, as oue of the editors of " Worcester's Dictionaries," the 
popular "Franklin Readers," and author of the successful little work, 
"Pronouncing Hand-Book of 3,000 Words," is well known as a thorough 
scholar. Mr. Root is an. accomplished speaker and instructor in the West; 
and both, through experience knowing the need of such a work, are well 
qualified to prepare it. 11 is a genuine success. 

VOCAL AND ACTION-LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND 

EXPRESSION. By E. X. Kirby, teacher of elocution in the Lynn 

High Schools. 12mo. English cloth binding. Price, §1-25. 

" Teachers and students of the art of public speaking, in any of its forms, 

will be benefited by a liberal use of this practical" hand-book." — Pre/. 

Churchill. 

KEENE'S SELECTIONS. Selection for reading and elocution. A 
hand-book for teachers and students. By J. W. Keene, A.M., M.D. 
Cloth. $1. 
"An admirable selection of practical pieces." 

LITTLE PIECES FOR LITTLE SPEAKERS. The primary 
school teacher's assistant. By a practical teacher. 16mo. Illustrated. 
75 cents. Also in boards, 60 cents. Has had an immense sale. 

THE MODEL SUNDAY-SCHOOL SPEAKER. Containing 
selections, in prose and verse, from the most popular pieces and dialogues 
for Sunday-school exhibitions. Illust. Cloth. 75 cents. Boards, 60 centa 
"A book very much needed." 



Special terms to teachers and classes. 

LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 



FOR SCHOOL EXERCISES AND EXHIBITIONS. 
GEO. M. BAKER'S POPULAR READERS AND SPEAKERS. 

THE READING CLUB, and Handy Speaker. Being selections in 
prose and poetry. Serious, humorous, pathetic, patriotic, and dramatic. 
In sixteen parts of fifty selections each. Cloth, 50 cents; paper, 15 cents 
each part. 

THE POPULAR SPEAKER. Containing the selections published 
in the Reading Club, Nob. 13, 14, 15, and 16. Cloth. $1.00. 

THE PREMIUM SPEAKER. Containing the selections published 
in the Reading Club, Xos. 9, 10, 11, and 12. 12mo. Cloth. §1.00. 

THE PRIZE SPEAKER. Containing the selections published in the 
Reading Club, Xos. 5, 6, 7, and 8. l:?mo. Cloth. $1.00. 

THE HANDY SPEAKER. Combining the selections published in the 
Reading Club, Xos. 1, 2, 3, and 4. 16mo. Cloth. Over 400 pages. $1.00. 
" Mr. Baker has acquired commendable fame for his rare skill in compiling 
from various authors selections suitable for many occasions. Boys will rind 
within these pages just what will suit them for declamation, and girls will 
cull prizes from the contents for recitation. Teachers will find material for 
answers to oft-recurring demands for assistance in finding ' pieces ' to learn; 
and the general reader will discover amusement for the passing hour, 
whether his mood be grave or gay." — Providence Journal. 

BY POPULAR AUTHORS. 

Parlor Varieties. Plays, Pantomimes, and Charades. By Emma E. 

Brewstee. 16mo. Boards, 50 cents ; paper, 30 cents. 
Parlor Varieties (2d Series). Tableaux. Dialogues, Pantomimes, etc. 

By Emma E. Brewster and Lizzie B. Scribner. Boards, 50 cents; 

paper, 30 cents. 
Dialogues from Dickens. For schools and home amusement. Selected 

and arranged by W. Eliot Fette, A.M. First Series. Illustrated. Cloth, 

$1.50. Second Series. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 

The Dialogues in the above books are selected from the best points of the 
stories, and can be extended by taking several scenes together. 
Social Charades and Parlor Opera. By M. T. Calder. Contain- 
ing Operas, Charades, with Popular Tunes. Boards, 50 cents ; paper, 30 

CCAtS. 

Poetical Dramas. For home and school. By Mary S. Cobb. Contain- 
ing Short Poetical and Sacred Dramas, suitable for Sunday-school enter- 
tainments, etc. Boards, 50 cents; paper, 30 cents. 

Footlight Frolics. School Opera, Charades, and Plays. By Mrs. 
Charles F. Fernald. Thirteen entertainments, including "Christmas 
Capers," a capital " Tree " introduction. Boards, 50 cents ; paper, 30 cents. 

Cobwebs. A Juvenile Operetta. By Mrs. Elizabeth P. Goodrich, 
author of " Young Folks' Opera," etc. 50 cents. 

Mother Goose Masquerades. (The Lawrence Mother Goose.) By 
E. D. K. Containing full directions for getting up an " Evening of Non- 
sense," Shadow-Plays, Pantomimes, Processions, Mimic Tableaux, and all 
the favorite ways of delineating passages of Mother Goose. Just the book 
for exhibitions. 50 cents net. 

Young Folks' Opera. An illustrated volume of Original Music and 
Words, bright, light, and sensible. By that favorite composer for the 
young, Mrs. Elizabeth Parsons Goodrich. 8vo. Boards, $1.00. 



S@ld by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price. 

LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 








■.m 



■ *$ - 



m 



,,« 






• 








pHF»& 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 100 594 4 




Hi 

HP 

111 



